


It: Chapter Three

by thosetworeddiewriters



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Abuse, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Gore, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Self-Harm, Slow Burn, Suicide Attempt, They're In Love Your Honor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:14:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 53,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22077523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thosetworeddiewriters/pseuds/thosetworeddiewriters
Summary: Richie usually loved holding Eddie. When he was younger, he would take any excuse to put his hands on him. He would pinch his cheeks, sit on his lap, slap his can. There was only ever one time Richie didn’t absolutely love holding Eddie, and that was when Eddie bled out in his arms, a million miles underneath Derry.Now, as Richie trudged through the sewers once again, Eddie’s limp but breathing body in his arms, all he could think about was how he was determined not to have a repeat of last time. Through some miracle, Richie had gotten Eddie back, and there was no way in hell he’d ever let him go again.(Or, the ultimate fix-it fic.)
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough/Audra Phillips, Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris
Comments: 127
Kudos: 944





	1. The Fallout

_Patricia Uris Can’t Catch his Breath_

1

A woman in a city too small to be famous but too big to be forgotten sat at an old dark oak desk. It was a writing desk, seldom used for that purpose, but used for it now; it was a gift from her father for her wedding. She sat in a chair, one that replaced the original that had fallen apart only last spring when her husband had stood on it to change a lightbulb. The original had no arms, only a seat and a back, and her husband trusted it like a blind man trusted a dog to help him cross the street—often worthy, but sometimes foolish. The leg had cracked, and luckily he had been alright, save a sprained wrist, but he made a comment about how he had maybe one too many of her homemade _butter biscuits_ for dinner the night before. She merely smiled in reply, as if one too many biscuits might have actually been what did the chair in, and it wasn’t something that could simply be attributed to old age.

Now though, the chair wasn’t a stool, it wasn’t a place that grew dusty or held books like it had occasionally in its life, it was, simply, _a chair._ A chair with a woman firmly planted upon it, where she had been for the past two hours.

She was wearing yoga pants. _Whatever that means,_ she heard her husband dismiss with a small, teasing grin. _They look like leggings to me._

_They’re not, Stanley. These are more comfortable._

_Hmph, then they’re sweats,_ he argued, maybe using the pants as an excuse to just admire his wife. 

_They’re not_ sweats, _Stan, they’re yoga pants._

And a hoodie, one with a zipper, one that Stan wore on weekends with jeans when he wasn’t headed to work at seven in the morning to avoid rush hour traffic.

She didn’t care for how she looked though; she couldn’t if she tried as she held a pen with the butt end pressed firmly against her temple. _Stan_ had always dealt with the paperwork; she didn’t know what she was reading. It could’ve been a Harvard student’s essay on rocket science for all she knew. _He_ was the accountant, _he_ was the one who dealt with papers and numbers, and now here _she_ was, filling his shoes.

Filling his hoodie.

For what seems like the millionth time but was probably only the tenth, the woman set the pen down on the writing desk with a vendetta, staring at the papers before her, the _will_ before her.

The will of her late husband. Her late husband’s will.

Stanley Uris’ name had been in the obituaries a week prior, though they had saved the gruesome details, mostly because his wife would not disclose them. Wouldn’t disclose the way the man had one long gash on each arm from wrist to elbow, two cuts so deep she could see tendons that looked like wet dog food bleeding out of him. Wouldn’t disclose 

**_IT_ **

written in his own blood on their bathroom wall. Wouldn’t disclose that their bathroom looked like not even a fly had touched it since the day they bought the property now, how it was clean with bleach, how she could still smell his cologne, how she, if she listened hard enough, might hear him open the fridge to grab a beer that he only kept for the odd night. 

It had read plainly, _loved by many, lost by more, survived by his wife, Patricia Uris, née Blum, and no children._

2

Thirty-two miles away in a cemetery, there sat a gargoyle. A gargoyle is only a gargoyle, by definition, if it has the purpose of deflecting water from the roof of a building when it rains. Otherwise, it is only a statuette. This, for all intents and purposes, was a gargoyle. He sat two feet tall on the corner of the synagogue that watched over the graves, and when the light filtered from the sun around dawn, like it was now, through stained glass, the gargoyle could enjoy the view of the cemetery. Yellows and pinks and blues reflected over headstones of different shapes and sizes, and the gargoyle, forever frozen in the position of which he was sculpted, one clawed foot beside the other, squatted down with wings protecting him from a non-existent wind, could imagine jumping from one headstone to the next. Like a maniacal game of _The Floor is Lava,_ a game every child played in their own living room.

Maybe this was the gargoyle’s living room. After all, he had nothing else, and outside was the only room he had ever lived in.

It’s sneering maw watched over row upon row of man, woman, and child that lay six feet under. As gruesome and crude as he may look, he was there to fend off evil, to let these beings dwell within their coffins in peace and quiet.

His wing cracked, maybe with age, maybe with despair, under the mourning sun. The _mourning_ sun. Not _morning._ This was an important difference, for perhaps the sun was punishing the gargoyle, reprimanding him for failing his duties.

In the third row, second aisle, there was an ornate grey slab, fresh and shiny, only with the dirt from a windy day over it. It hadn’t the time to decay, and over it, one could read:

**_Stanley H. Uris_ **

**_1976 - 2016_ **

**_“There is no Exquisite Beauty,_ **

**_Without some strangeness in the proportion”_ **

**_\- Edgar A. Poe_ **

**_Loving Husband of Patricia “Patty” Uris_ **

And thirty-two miles (and six feet, if you counted the dirt above him) from Stanley, sat his Patty at a writing desk that they’d gotten from his father-in-law for their wedding.

Beneath the gravestone, though, beneath the six feet of dirt, more like only five with the coffin counting, was the body of Stanley Uris. One might say the _corpse_ of Stanley Uris.

One might be wrong, then.

Air forced its way into Stanley’s lungs, and his eyes opened so violently, so quickly that it was like he’d been shocked by a defibrillator as he inhaled oxygen into his body to feed what little blood was left inside of him. He blinked away dirt that had crept into his straight jacket of a home, not that he could see anything anyway. If someone could see him, it would be like seeing a ghost or something from a particularly terrible zombie film. He was pale, his gums felt sticky and swollen in his mouth, and his eyes were bloodshot red.

He had an open casket service. Stan had always looked like a peaceful man, of course, but everyone agreed that he looked at _peace_. They had said it in a tone that conveyed that he was dead, yes, but that wherever he was, he was happy. 

The morticians had said offhandedly to each other that he wasn’t an ugly man. His eye sockets sat in a bit, but not from death, instead from years of knowing too much, and his hair was inky, in a way they were sure would look nice against his smooth skin if he hadn’t been so ashy. They bathed him. It was a dirty (and ironic) job, but it needed to be done alongside disinfecting. He’d been dressed in his Sunday best: a black suit, a white dress shirt, and a black tie. On his wrist sat his _Rolex_ that Patty had gotten him for his birthday three years prior. The watch that he wore every day dug into stitched up skin in a way that, if he had been alive, would have hurt tremendously. His hair was swept to the side like it had been every day since he was barely seven, and his eyes were shut peacefully. 

To be cremated was against his religion, strictly. To be embalmed was also a no-no. He thought now, trapped in his polished wooden, satin-lined hell, that if embalming weren’t a religious Big Bad, he would surely be dead. All of his blood in his body would be replaced with fluid to keep him from decaying before the funeral, but somehow he hadn’t decayed. He thought, behind the panic of waking up in a darkness darker than hell, _hey, at least I still have blood,_ which was bizarre, because he killed himself. He had bled out. _Hey, at least I still have blood, but I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t have any blood left. It should be all out in my tub and on the wall beside it. Why do I still have blood?_ Why _do I still have blood? Bill,_ why?

When he opened his mouth to speak, to scream for help in what he could only assume was life after death (and oh how painfully right he was), he found he _couldn’t._ Not in a surreal _I’m so terrified I can’t speak or yell for help! Nobody will ever find me!_ kind of way, but a physical _holy fuck! I can’t move my mouth!_ kind of way.

Stanley had always been a logical thinker, even when panicking, but now any logic he had fled him like he used to flee Bowers and his gang, fled him like he used to flee the synagogue after temple on Sunday to go and catch up with the Losers for the day during spring and summer.

He inhaled deeply through his nose, hands pressing against the soft ceiling of his eternal prison, and realized with horror that he didn’t have unlimited air. _Slow, deep breaths Stan, breathe slowly or else you will die._

But hadn’t that been the goal?

He steadied his breaths and again tried to open his mouth, his jaw clicked (he realized, again with horror, that his jaw had never clicked before now, and that perhaps it was the dampness of the soil around him that was causing rigor mortis to itch into his bones) and it moved freely, but his skin pulled, and he gasped through his nose in pain.

_My mouth!_ He thought and a sudden noise yelped from his throat, panic racing through his veins with the speed of Silver, Silver who could beat the devil, _they’ve sewn it shut! My mouth! My mouth!_

_A shame_ , the mortician had said to the other, his voice older than the rest of his body, as he’d sewn Stanley Uris’ mouth shut with practiced fingers, with thread so fine and stitches so tight it was like a machine had done it, _a real shame_ . _He has good teeth. He probably had a good smile._

Stans arms burned, from the tips of his fingers, to his wrist that had his _Rolex_ on it, to the stitches that had his arteries sloppily sewn together, to his elbows. Everything burned like fire ants under his sleeves, and it was then he’d allowed himself to move, to lift his hands and feel along the inside of the soft box. He started light only for a second, his hands were shaking and he was running out of air. 

Patty had put on a movie once, one with _Ryan Reynolds_ where he’d been buried alive in Afghanistan or somewhere in the Middle East, Iraq, maybe. Stan couldn’t remember. He’d been held for ransom by terrorists, and Stan remembered thinking how absolutely horrifying that would be. He remembered thinking _how is he going to get out of the box with only an old Nokia cell phone, a pencil, and a lighter?_ He remembered (spoiler alert) that Ryan Reynolds _didn’t_ get out, that the box had cracked open and dirt had piled in and that Reynolds had choked to death on dirt. If _Ryan Reynolds_ couldn’t get out of a coffin, then how could he? It was a stupid thought, but he felt hopeless, even with his even breathing. Not only did Ryan have those items, but he also had people looking for him. 

What did Stan have? A wife and co-workers and the _Losers_ , all of which he was certain thought he was dead. Hell, _he_ thought he was dead, in all fairness to them. Stanley slammed his hand against the ceiling, and pain shot up his forearm as he thought miserably _I’m never going to get out of here._ _I’m going to choke on my own dust and ashes._

What made him think he could get out? He couldn’t; it was that simple. He was completely at the will of God. At the will of Him, who had blessed Stan with everything short of children in his life. 

And he didn’t even have a cell phone, a pencil, _or_ a lighter.

And distantly, six feet up (more like five, with the coffin) and across the rows of gravestones, the gargoyle's wing cracked further, and he wept morning dew along his cement cheeks that said something was not right in the garden he’d nursed. He mourned for a son who had come to life, a son who he had failed to protect in death.

A gargoyle wards off evil, and he hadn’t.

_Richie Tozier Takes a Nap_

This was fine. Everything was fine. Richie was _fine_. He had literally never been more _fucking_ _fine_ in his _fine fucking life._

Richie sobbed silently like the pathetic loser that he was until four thirty-two in the morning. Everyone else was fast asleep by one at the latest. He was going to fly home to California and forget about fucking Derry, Maine. He was going to forget Beverly and Eddie and Stan and Mike and Eddie and Ben and Bill and Stan and Eddie and Eddie and _fucking_ _Eddie_. 

Richie never did clean off his glasses. They were still cracked at the top of the left lens, and they still had Eddie’s blood on them. Richie had a jacket he stole from Eddie’s still-unpacked suitcase pulled close to his chest. He breathed quickly, trying both to catch his breath and remember as much of Eddie’s scent as he could before he lost it for good. Tears stained the light grey jacket dark. It looked as ugly as it felt. 

Richie fell asleep a little before five, not because he wanted to, but because his body was so physically exhausted it just shut down. 

And he dreamed. 

He opened his eyes, and he was inside a box. A wooden box, from the feel of it. One lined with soft fabric. But there was no air. He looked around frantically, but it was a darker black than Richie had ever seen before. He involuntarily moved his hands and began pounding on the roof of the box. His wrists burned. His hands shook. His gut instinct was to scream for help, but he knew better. He didn’t know why he knew better because nothing made sense, but then fear washed over him like cold water from an idle bathtub. He made such a small sound, it was an honest-to-God whimper, but his lips didn’t move, and he didn’t sound like himself. He sounded like... like what a grown Stanley Uris might sound like. It was thirteen-year-old Stanley Uris but just a little deeper. It was such a brief noise, barely lasting even a second, but Richie knew it was Stan. He didn’t know why he knew, but then it clicked. It wasn’t a box, and he wasn’t dreaming that he was actually himself. He was Stanley Uris, who was alive and was buried two days ago. And he was running out of air. 

The next thing Richie knew, he was half-submerged in water. He could barely breathe. He was scared- no. He was _petrified_. There was an insane amount of pain coming from his chest, more than he had ever known before, right where Eddie had been stabbed. His hands were soaked in blood. Wet blood layer upon dried blood layer upon raw skin. He blinked and tried to look around, but there was only dust and rubble and debris. He called out for Bill. Then Bev. Then for Richie. But nobody could hear him. 

It was Eddie, underneath Neibolt. There wasn’t a doubt in Richie’s mind about it.

Richie woke up in a cold sweat, scrambling for something, though not knowing what. He sat up and tried to get out of bed, but in his restless sleep he’d tangled his slightly-better-than-motel-but-not-quite-hotel-quality sheets around his legs. In his haste, he took himself to the ground, his chin landing on the uneven wooden flooring of his room with a painful thud and a _“fuck!_ ” Richie took half a second to register the pain, but as soon as he was coherent, he pulled the blankets off himself—tearing them in the process—and got to his feet, grabbing his car keys and pulling on the first pair of shoes he saw on the floor as he sprinted down the stairs. He didn’t think twice before getting in his car and speeding down the street. This was Derry, so cops didn’t really do jack shit. Even if they did, Richie wouldn’t have slowed down. He didn’t think his rental car had ever been driven over one hundred and twenty miles an hour, but hey, there was a first time for everything. The drive to Neibolt from the Townhouse was about fifteen or twenty minutes, and Richie was there in under three. When he got to 29 Neibolt Street, he slammed on the brakes, making his seat belt lock up for a split second. (He was in a rush but he wasn’t about to die in a car crash on his impromptu well-past-midnight drive.) He didn’t pull off to the side of the road and didn’t turn off the car before getting out. He ran through the gate and stood at the front of the pile of a shattered house. Richie would have called it a home, but he wasn’t so sure if it had ever been that.

“Eddie!” 

He knew it was just a dream. He knew Eddie was dead and that he was a mile deep underground and crushed into a million little pieces, but he didn’t care. He was hysterical with grief; he was willing to grapple at the frayed ends of the rope that he could only hope led back to Eddie. 

“Eddie! _Eddie!”_

Richie had no idea where to start digging. He was absolutely terrified of the dark and everything around him sucked up light. But underneath him was Eddie, so fear was thrown out the window, completely forgotten. Richie began shoving things off to the side with such a force that they shattered when they hit the Earth again. Wooden planks, metal stakes, and pieces of glass panes flew across the gloomy night sky. His movements were weak but not sluggish, tired but not slow. 

“Eddie-“ Tears fell freely, and for once in his life he didn’t care. “Please... _Eds…_ Eddie, _where are you?! Eddie!”_

Richie’s throat was raw, but he ignored the pain. It was nothing compared to what his heart had gone through. He was clawing at the rubble, a newfound wave of strength coursing through him from out of nowhere. He dug in random places before moving on to somewhere else as if Eddie would be right on top of the debris, buried under only a thin layer of remains. Richie only stopped when he found the top of the well. That stupid _fucking_ well. The hook above it where they had hung the rope to lower themselves down was gone. Fucking _shit_. There went Richie’s plans to hang himself. (As if. His manager would kill him. Again.) So instead, Richie sat down, pulled his knees to his chest, and didn’t cry anymore. He ran out of tears to give. He just felt miserable. If he closed his eyes and blocked out the sounds of the wind shaking the trees, it was almost like he could hear Eddie calling out for him. 

But then he heard it again, only this time more clearly. It was coming from the well. 

Eddie was in the sewers. 

The well led to the sewers. 

“Holy _shit,”_ Richie cursed. “Holy shit! _Eddie!”_ He looked around frantically for something to get down there with, something he could use so he could follow the voice he never thought he’d hear again but there was no time to look for a rope. Eddie needed help, and he needed it right then and there. He wasn’t just hurt, he was _dying._

Without thinking about his own wellbeing, Richie swung his legs over the side of the well. His feet dangled over the seemingly endless abyss. He had no idea how deep it went or what was at the bottom, but he pushed his feet up against one side of the well and pressed his back to the other and began to lower himself down. He got maybe four feet down, his head barely under the top of the well, when he heard Eddie call for him again. 

Then he slipped. 

His shirt rode up and his back scraped against the jagged stones as he fell. He could feel his skin being shredded like paper. He wasn’t sure how exactly he caught himself, but his hands were bleeding too, but the entrance to the sewers was only a foot below him, so he would take it. Nearly dying was worth it if there was any chance Eddie was down there, dead or alive. Maybe Bon Jovi knew what the fuck was up after all. 

Richie crawled into the sewers and immediately felt colder. There was absolutely _nothing_ in the sewers. Not anymore. They killed It, for real this time. It was gone, and all that was left was piss and shit. Greywater. Piss and shit and greywater and Eddie. 

_Eddie._

“Eddie!” Richie took off as quickly as he could while wading in water that came up to mid-thigh. 

“Eddie!” His one voice bounced off the walls. The water burned like hell against his new open wounds, but he didn’t think about the pain. He couldn’t afford to.

“Eddie! Goddamnit, where the fuck are you?! _Eddie!”_

_Eddie Kaspbrak Wakes Up_

He woke up in water. In water and under something heavy that made his chest feel like it did when he needed his inhaler. He hadn’t needed his inhaler in years, decades even, but something about Derry itched at his lungs and mixed the asthma he didn’t have with the anxiety he very much did have. Now, he felt like he had never needed it more as air tried to fill his lungs and he gasped out raggedly.

Eddie didn’t remember a lot of things upon welcoming the living world. He remembered being scared, he remembered following the Losers, he remembered that fucking clown, and he remembered Richie. He remembered running over to him to check if he was alright, to celebrate the death of-

Wait. No. Not the death of. He remembered being stabbed and thrown aside. 

He remembered dying.

He did not, however, remember Pennywise dying, and that made his heart beat faster as he blinked into the dark space around frantically, as if the clown could show up from the shadows (and he could, if memory served Eddie correctly, which it did). He coughed as his hands felt down; he wasn’t being crushed, but he was definitely trapped. He wasn’t by any means chubby, though he wasn’t a stick like some of the other Losers either, and he thought maybe if he was, he’d be able to shimmy his way out, but rubble poked against baby fat he’d never been able to get rid of on his sides and pinned him down over his naval.

But then he moved, and searing pain shot up his torso and into his ribs. _Right_ . Stab wound. _Gaping stab wound._ “Fuck-“ he heaved out, eyes wide as he glanced at his hands, shaking and covered in crimson. “Fuck- fuck, fuck- fucking-“ and then he promptly gagged, just the pain made him nauseous. _How am I even alive? What happened? Where is the clown?_ Fear coursed through him as he blinked around, water sloshing as he moved his head, which was resting in a puddle. “Billy?” He tried, and he sounded smaller than he cared to admit as an almost forty-year-old man, “I-I don’t-“ He looked back down, grimacing as he shifted his leg and moved a bit of rubble onto him. Not that he’d be able to move on his own even if he wasn’t covered in whatever he was under; his body had a massive flesh wound for fuck’s sake. “Bev? R-Richie?” He tried again, trying to pretend like he wasn’t about to cry.

He could almost hear the laughter as the seconds passed like hours, the laughter of a clown, or hundreds of Derry children, he wasn’t sure, and every time something echoed around him, he panicked. He panicked and accepted death, going through the five stages of grief at a quicker and quicker speed every single time he cycled through them until he just rested. Maybe resting included a little bit of crying, but he was alone, and being alone meant nobody needed to know if he let a few tears slip.

Somewhere, many, _many_ feet below the desperate cries of a decaying man, Eddie’s eyes adjusted slowly to the damp, dank sewers. And it was, in fact, the sewers. He resorted to laying still—not that he had many other options—and he stared blankly at the drowning darkness around him. He figured if there was someone watching him, they’d laugh. His pupils were probably blown, his movements were stiff and shaky the odd time he _did_ move, and he had cried at least three times now. 

Eddie tried desperately to ignore the amount of greywater around him, and he tried to tell himself that all of those shadows dancing around his vision weren’t real. They weren’t, after all; scientifically, he knew that when the brain had no visual stimulation, it got bored, and it made something out of nothing. It gave the darkness a body. And how bizarre was that, he thought with a small scoff, that perhaps their brains had all been bored, and they had made Pennywise, they had given the darkness a body. But It wasn’t a figment of his imagination, no, Eddie had quite a hefty hole in his chest for It to be just that.

He thought about the wound and thought maybe he was losing blood again when he heard an echo. It wasn’t an echo in the sewers, and it wasn’t an echo in his head, but somewhere between those. It was real and entirely imagined at the same time, as he heard a resounding voice calling him, a voice belonging to a little boy in an oversized Hawaiian shirt he probably got from the off-brand Goodwill on Fourth Street. He closed his eyes as he listened to Richie, to that dorky little kid with glasses who fucked his mom. Then he scoffed and blinked his eyes open at his own thoughts. What he wouldn’t give for a ‘your mom’ joke now. 

But it got louder, less like an echo in the mountains, and more like an echo in the sewers. It got older, more desperate, and Eddie tried to sit up again as he blinked around owlishly before fire burned up his spine and he cried out in pain and fell back. _“Shit-“_ he hissed, “Richie-“

His voice was hoarse from crying, but he tried again and was louder this time, doubting his sanity but grasping for straws. “Richie!”

Eddie heard _something_ and he felt his shoulders shaking before he realized he was crying. He’d been awake for so long, an hour or two at least of just laying there, and the idea of salvation or extermination seemed so impossibly far away. “Ri-chie-“ he managed, voice breaking as he cried. He didn’t care if that asshole saw him crying at this point, he just needed to see a familiar face. “Richie!” He felt so close; he sounded so _close_.

“Richie for fuck’s sake-“ and then his voice got quicker in the way it did when he was panicking. “Get your stupid fucking ass over here or I swear to God I’ll-“ All while he was shaking with the effort to just steady his breathing. 

He could hear the water sloshing, and if this was how Pennywise wanted him to die, hallucinating his friend’s voice, then this was how he was happy to go. Or maybe this was hell, and Richie would never actually reach him. “Please,“ Eddie choked through a sob. “Please I-I’m so fucking scared Richie- I can’t breathe-“ he continued, as though the man were right next to him, talking to him. “Richie! I’m right here!”

_Richie Tozier Carries a Corpse_

Richie wasn’t hallucinating. There was no way he was hallucinating. 

Although maybe Richie was still caught in the Deadlights. Maybe he was still floating in the air with his eyes turned white and jaw hanging open. Maybe Eddie hadn’t saved him, and this was all just a bad dream It was feeding into his head. He’d take being stuck in the Deadlights for all eternity if that meant Eddie got another hour of life. Or even just a minute.

Then Eddie started a string of curse words so long and vulgar that they basically had the Kaspbrak seal of approval on them. And then Eddie’s voice broke. He was scared. 

“Eds, hang on! I’m coming, I promise! Just keep talking to me!” 

Richie ran around in what felt like circles; he had no light except the dull green glow of the water. After circling around to what looked like an area he’d seen a million times, he spotted a shoe. Without thinking, he grabbed it. “Eds!” When he pulled, he anticipated Eddie’s voice; what he got was an entire leg coming his way, completely detached from a body. 

_“Whatthefuckwhatthefuckwhatthefuck.”_ Richie dropped the leg and prayed it wasn’t Eddie’s. “You still got all your limbs right? Eds?”

There was a second of silence, and Richie didn’t know if Eddie was checking, or if he was just trying not to sound completely mortified, before he heard a distant, “yeah. I got ‘em all.” Richie felt the tension in his shoulders slacken just a bit. 

He looked around frantically, trying to find something new, something he hadn’t seen, something that would lead him to Eddie. It took what felt like hours, but eventually, he spotted a thin line of blood floating through the water. Richie followed it carefully, his face so close to the surface of the sewer’s water he could smell a century's worth of Derry pee, and it led him to a hand. He knew that hand. He would recognize it anywhere. 

_“Eddie!”_ He gaped for a moment before running over into the shallow water to greet the man that stared back like he was seeing a ghost. He dropped to his knees and took Eddie’s hand, who managed to weakly grab back out of, if nothing else, shock. Eddie couldn’t believe that he was real. _Richie was real_. 

“Oh my God! You’re alive!” He squeezed Eddie’s hand gently, careful not to hurt him. He would never forgive himself if he hurt Eddie, even if it was just a little bit, especially not now when he was already in so much indescribable pain. Eddie stared at him, brown eyes hazy with mortal grey around the edges. He swallowed thickly unable to look away from his own reflection in Richie’s cracked glasses. “Eh- _Eds,”_ the latter’s voice cracked. “I-I left you down here. Eds, I... Eds, I’m so _sorry.”_ Richie stared at the gory scene in front of him. It was a miracle Eddie hadn’t already bled out, but he hadn’t, not yet. 

_Eddie hadn’t died yet._

Richie scrambled to his feet when he realized Eddie needed to get out as fast as possible if he wanted even a fraction of a chance at seeing the sun again. Richie began throwing debris and rubble off of Eddie, and while there wasn’t all that much, he knew Eddie couldn’t move. He was rendered almost entirely immobile all because he had taken a hit meant for Richie. 

It should have been him. 

Between the adrenaline and the worry, Richie had the area cleared in less than a minute, much to the relief of both men. He knelt down over Eddie, tears dripping into the water around them. 

_“Eds.”_

He knew he should have immediately gotten Eddie up. He knew every second was the click of an empty chamber in a game of Russian roulette between life and death, but Richie took ten of those precious seconds and hugged Eddie, choosing to ignore the hiss of pain that Eddie choked on as he was jerked forward, even if it was only by an inch. 

Richie cried into his shoulder, feeling his chest rise and fall, and listened to his heart beat slowly, while Eddie was just grateful for the physical warmth of another living being after so long of suffocating on the nothingness. 

“We killed It, Eds,” Richie said, almost breathlessly. “We killed It. No more clowns. This goddamn circus is over.” His joke landed flat because it was shitty, _he_ was shitty (pun intended), and Eddie was _dying_. 

“Rich,” Eddie started, his voice wet. _“Richie.”_ He hugged back as tightly as he was physically capable of, ignoring the blood dripping from his mouth and coming from his stomach that he was most definitely getting on the other man’s shirt. “I’m going to fucking kill you, you dickwad,“ Eddie let out, lost somewhere between laughing and sobbing as he pulled back. “I’ve never wanted to shower this badly. Please, _please_ get me out of here. I’m never coming into the sewers ever again- I do not give a shit how many fucking _clowns-“_ He choked, coughing, _hacking_ blood and various other fluids, both bodily and not, all over Richie. 

_Of course the first thing Eddie wants is a shower,_ Richie mused to himself. _Of course. How very_ Eddie _of him._

“Alright,” Richie huffed, ignoring all of the blood. _Don’t throw up, don’t throw up, Tozier,_ _do_ not _throw up._ “Okay-“ he added on with more emotion than he cared for, and after his ten seconds he’d allowed for the hug, he lowered Eddie again. 

“Rich- _no,_ “ Eddie wheezed out, eyes widening in panic. “Please don’t go. _Please-“_

“Hey- _hey.”_ Richie hushed, trying to smile, but really, it just looked like an awkward twitch of his mouth. “I’m not going anywhere. Not without you. Let’s get you out of here.”

It felt better now that rubble was no longer scraping at Eddie's sides, even when he gargled on a noise of pain, blood pooling in his mouth as he was moved. That couldn’t have been a good sign, but he would rather die of blood loss than under a heap of rocks in greywater; he’d already gone that way once, so he took his vices.

“I didn’t realize how much it felt like my bones were being crushed,“ Eddie wheezed out. He had managed to sit up a bit, propped up on his elbows, but choked on his own words again. Thick globs of blood splattered out of his mouth, onto his chin, and into his hand as he lifted it to cover the hacking. 

Eddie swallowed thickly and looked to his hand vaguely. “Huh,“ he said promptly with wide eyes and raised brows, and then he gagged, all while Richie watched with thinly veiled disgust and worry.

“Yeah, alright. Out now, bitch later.” Eddie swallowed again, wiping his hand on his jacket as he looked back to Richie, breathing still heavy. He shook his head. “I don’t know if I can get up. I don’t-... I don’t think I can.“

He coughed up clots of blood, and panic hit Richie from a new angle. “You can bitch as much as you want later, Eds,” he promised, “but you’re getting out of here. I’ll-... I’ll fucking carry you out of here if you can’t walk, but I’m _not_ leaving you again, goddammit.” 

Richie put a hand underneath Eddie. He could feel every bloody, shredded thread of skin on his Eddie’s back. His skin was so pale and fragile. Richie could confidently say that this was the one occasion where Eddie _actually_ was fragile. Normally he was made of stone, and Richie wasn’t afraid to toss him around, but Eddie had been _dead_ not but a few hours ago. He didn’t have a fucking _pulse_. Sue him if Richie felt like maybe Eddie wasn’t in the best shape. 

“I’m gonna lift you up, okay, Eds? It’s gonna hurt like a bitch but suck it up. It’s either that or die again down here ‘cause you were too much of a pussy to deal with being stabbed by a killer alien clown.” Richie put his other arm under Eddie’s knees and counted to three before picking him up. 

Eddie screamed as he was lifted, a low and pained noise echoing back at him through the sewers as he felt red hot searing agony shoot up his spine. He didn’t have the energy to waste on defending himself against Richie calling him a pussy. “Mhm,” he hummed, but it wasn’t a steady sound, so it wasn’t really a hum. Nothing about him was steady. He kept trying and failing to catch his breath. He needed his inhaler, _God,_ how he needed it. 

After eating at Jade of the Orient, Richie and Eddie wound up screwing around in Richie’s room, just the two of them, despite the fact that they knew they should have been packing their bags. Maybe they both subconsciously knew that they weren’t going to leave. Maybe they knew that leaving Derry after arriving wasn’t an option. It wasn’t as simple as taking their shit and driving out of town. And besides, they had a promise to make good on. 

While in the Townhouse, they didn’t so much as catch up rather than poke fun at each other for three hours, but Richie did learn about Myra. He didn’t know a lot but he knew he didn’t like her. He had picked up enough of Eddie’s tone and word choice regarding his wife to know that much. Another thing Richie picked up Eddie himself. It was just for shits and giggles, something that led to an immature tickle fight that made Richie feel like he was twelve again (Eddie was just as ticklish as he was when they were kids), but he had learned about how heavy Eddie was. 

But now he was so much lighter. The water in his place was red.

Richie wasn’t sure how to get out. He couldn’t lift Eddie up the well, he knew he couldn’t. It was impossible with him in his current state. Richie wasn’t that strong, and even if he was, what if he dropped Eddie? It would kill him. 

But then Richie remembered something. _The Barrens._

“We gotta go out through the Barrens,” he said, knowing Eddie had an unusually remarkable sense of direction. He was never lost, even if he was somewhere new. He always knew which path to take, it was like he had a compass in his head. There was a vague memory of a younger Eddie leading the Losers through the sewers that was threatening to surface in Richie’s mind, but he pushed it down. There wasn’t time for reliving repressed memories. “I came down through the well, but I can’t get you back up that was. I can’t think of another way out. It has to be the Barrens. I just don’t know...” Richie looked around, and suddenly the many different tunnels branching off of wherever the fuck they were looked a lot more daunting than they had a few seconds ago. He knew that whichever way they had to go, they had to go quickly. Without the cold water helping to slow blood flow down, Eddie was going to bleed out in Richie’s arms. _Again._

Eddie blinked and forced his eyes open wide, glancing at the tunnels around them. He looked down at the water and mentally sent a thank you to his enthusiastic ten-year-old self who joined Boy Scouts just to spend more time with Stan as he watched the current. “Follow the water,” Eddie instructed drowsily. “Follow the current. It’ll lead us out into the Kendudkeag—the river,” he explained, not coherent enough to care about how his head fell back into the crook of Richie’s arm and his shoulder.

Eddie’s thoughts drifted. He soon came across something strange: it was incredibly ironic that he was a risk analyst and had yet somehow fucked himself so terribly. “Then call a fucking ambulance, and get me out of this goddamn hick town and to a hospital.”

“Okay,” Richie said mindlessly, feeling the water rush against his ankles, against his calves, his thighs, hips, and waist as he waded deeper into the sewer’s murky waters. In literally any other situation, Richie would have poured all his attention into how precious Eddie was, his eyes barely open as he tried to stay awake, his head against Richie. But this was a weak Eddie fighting to stay alive, using Richie as a lifeline. “That’s the plan, Spaghetti,” Richie said, nearly unaware that he was speaking as he plowed through the water. He was fairly certain he felt human hair and fingers brush up against his legs every few minutes, but he figured it was best to keep that little detail to himself. It would only freak Eddie out more, although Richie didn’t think they could get any more unsanitary. They both had several open wounds and were sloshing around in literal piss and shit. 

It felt like hours—and honestly, it probably was—but eventually, Richie caught sight of the rising sun. He broke out into a sprint, fresh air hitting him with a wave of relief as he stood at the opening of the sewer drain they’d entered so long ago to find little Georgie Denbrough, naïve to the ways of the adult world. But he couldn’t calm down too much; the hardest part may have been over, but Eddie was still dying, and he was dying quickly.


	2. The Quietus

_Richie Tozier Gets Some Bad News_

And it was at that point, only when the heat of the new day’s sun was beating down on his face, that Richie realized his phone had also been wading through greywater for the past several hours. There was no way it was going to work. He couldn’t make the trek back to the Townhouse—it was six and a half miles away—but he _could_ go the half-mile back to his rental car, which he had left running with a full tank of gas and an emergency help button that would call the nearest 911 operator.

“Eds? Eds, you gotta stay awake for me.” He looked away from the too-bright sky and down to Eddie’s bloodied body. Panic flooded through his veins, and it was stopped cold only when it was replaced with an all-too-familiar fear. Fear, in Richie’s own opinion, was a much shittier emotion than panic, so he, too, immediately began to feel much shittier. “My phone is broken. We gotta get back to my car.” Richie felt pieces of his soul chip away every time Eddie lolled his head, every time he drooled red, which was terrifyingly often. He waited a beat for a response, for something snarky, something mean, or even just an _okay, Rich._ He would have taken _anything_ , but instead he got Eddies nose nestled against the side of his chest, eyes either heavily lidded or closed, Richie couldn’t tell. “Just a little further. Just a few more minutes.” Richie fixed his grip on Eddie’s limp body, his arms trembling as he walked. “Just a little while longer. Just a little more time.” He couldn’t stop his own mindless rambling now, too afraid of the silence, too afraid of what the quiet might say instead. “Hang in there, Eds. You’ve come this far.” 

For the first time all night—or rather, all morning—Richie was beginning to feel his own blood loss get to him. He hadn’t quite processed just exactly how cut up he was from digging in the ruins of a house, scraping his back down at least thirty feet of jagged rocks, running in the sewers, and then carrying a fully grown man several miles through greywater. Any and all wounds he had earned in the fight against It had reopened. Eddie wasn’t the only one who needed medical attention, although Richie wasn’t quite dying yet. 

When he finally got to his car, Richie set Eddie in the driver's seat because the door was already open and setting down Eddie to open the passenger’s side door wasn’t an option. If he did that, Richie didn’t know if he’d be able to pick Eddie up again. Eddie’s blood stained the leather seats, but Richie couldn’t have cared less. He sat down in the passenger’s seat and didn’t lean back, instead reaching forward. Now that he wasn’t completely hyperfocused on moving forward to keep Eddie from bleeding out, it was all too easy to feel the rips running up and down his spine. He pressed the help button, and in a way that was so hysterical it sounded calm, he told the operator who took, in Richie’s frankly very biased opinion, _much_ too long to answer, “I have a friend who is bleeding out and dying very quickly, and I’m not looking too good myself. Can we get an ambulance please? Thank you.”

Very suddenly it became very apparent just how much blood there was between the two of them. Richie couldn’t get over how they were both more bloody than not, how fluids seeped into every crack and crevice of the car. Blood was _everywhere._ It was on him in so many places that he could barely see his own skin in between the red. Eddie was still bleeding out like there was no tomorrow, and Richie didn’t want to think about if there wasn’t. He couldn’t do it again. He couldn’t mourn like that again. He just couldn’t. Flashes of what was a very likely future for Richie Tozier filled his mind. None of them were any less bloody than the scene before him. 

Richie shook his head a little too aggressively, as if to throw out the ideas of what felt like the inevitable. He couldn’t afford to think like that. Not now. 

For the first time since making it to the rental, Richie looked over at Eddie, who was wearing the dopiest little smile Richie had seen on him in a long time. There was a kind of twinkle in his eye, like he knew something Richie didn’t, and he did. With the most minuscule of gestures and microexpressions, Richie knew exactly what Eddie was thinking. He was thinking about how Richie did this... this _thing_ . It was almost embarrassing, really, that Richie could tell what Eddie was thinking about him. It almost felt like mind-reading. It was insane to think that even after all this time, Richie could still read Eddie so well. Now with one shared look that would have been too intimate if it had been between any two other people, both men were thinking about how Richie did his _thing_ where when he panicked you couldn’t really see it anywhere but his eyes. Even his voice remained relatively level. It held the urgency it needed, but overall, it wasn’t panicky. His _eyes_ though, his eyes got big and scared, and his brow got furrowed. They all had their ticks: Eddie spoke too fast, Bill stuttered, Mike got quiet, and Richie’s eyes betrayed him. It seemed to be as simple as that, but they both knew it went down miles deeper into a past Richie wanted desperately to forget. He had tried to forget before and well… look how that turned out. He wouldn’t consider himself a cat person, but he was already on his fifth life. He couldn’t help but wonder if it would really take him nine tries to create any lasting damage, because he wasn’t sure he had four more left in him. 

Eddie looked down at himself, rested a hand over his stomach, and seemed to realize with a great deal of anxiety that his body was coming down. Quickly. He was running out of the adrenaline of being found, his body was coming out of shock, and he was _dying_. Without giving that a further thought, he reached over to Richie’s glove box, leaving a massive bloody handprint on the dash as he missed the latch. He tried again and snagged it under his nails, clicking it open, and then began digging around, pulling out old crumpled up napkins as he went. 

Richie watched Eddie rummage through his shit, his heart hammering and his lungs rattling with every jagged breath he took. Richie was no doctor, but he knew that Eddie really shouldn’t be moving around with a wound like that. Not with the fucking gaping hole in his torso. Blood dripped from his- well, his _everything_ , but it wasn’t so much as a drip rather than a semi-steady stream leaking from his body. There was so much blood that within seconds there was a pool forming around Richie’s feet. It was then that he very abruptly realized, _oh, Eddie’s trying not to bleed out using old napkins from fucking Burger King. I should probably do something about that._

Richie quickly took off his jacket—not that it was really his; it was the grey one he stole from Eddie’s suitcase—but realized that it was soaked in his own blood. He also realized he couldn’t feel the skin on his back. _At all._ He leaned forward in the seat, his stomach pressing uncomfortably into the open door of the glovebox as he reached behind him and pulled a small stone with a dozen sharp points out of his own flesh, right along his spine. Eddie regarded him tiredly, but his brow still furrowed in light worry.

Well _that_ wasn’t ideal. 

Richie pushed the thought aside. There were more pressing matters at hand. Like the fact that Eddie was, in the most literal sense, _dying_ , and yet he still had time and energy to worry about someone else. 

Richie knew that he always kept a spare change of clothes in the backseat in case he, for some reason, needed to make a quick change. On more than one occasion, Richie had driven for more than twenty hours straight, often having to make a public appearance shortly after arriving at his destination. And digging around in his suitcase to change clothes in a gas station stall wasn’t fun, so he just kept extra clothes in the back seat. And thank God he did.

“You still eat like shit,” Eddie reprimanded lightly as he started wiping off his face, throwing the napkins out of the car as they became unusable. Sue him, but he didn’t really care that he was littering, given the circumstances. Even on a good day he wasn’t one to preach about saving the turtles, but now he wished a turtle would save him.

Richie grabbed the shirt he had crumbled in a ball in the backseat. It was a tacky orange and black Freebirds shirt he had gotten from eating at the chain so many times while touring through the south. This was the best use Richie had ever gotten out of the damn thing. “Yeah, well, without my shitty eating habits, I wouldn’t have this shirt or those napkins, so you’re welcome,” Richie said, his expression betraying his words and tone. He moved all of the napkins from Eddie’s torso, trying to stomach looking at what seemed to be—and almost definitely was—organs and bones. (Richie always had a weak stomach, much to his disappointment.) He pressed the shirt to Eddie’s wound, which was still bleeding profusely, and the shirt was almost immediately soaked through. 

“Nghah! Jesus—fuck!” Eddie shouted, body wrenching forward before slamming back against the seat like he was being electrocuted. Richie didn’t notice until now how lines of clean skin dragged down from his eyes, cleaning his face with tears. Richie pitied him, and he very rarely ever pitied Eddie because he rarely ever needed or wanted it, but he kept his hand pressed firmly to his stomach. He tried not to move, because when he did Eddie flinched and groaned, and Richie could feel things moving, blood pumping, insides throbbing through the fabric of the orange-turned-red fabric. Nothing was doing very much good to stop the bleeding.

They were in silence for what must have been at least a full minute of Eddie's labored breathing, until it was graciously broken.

Eddie looked over to Richie from the corner of his eye. Richie wasn’t the only one who had eyes that were windows to his old, battered soul that still refused to completely grow up. Eddie asked, his voice small, “how long was I down there?” But it was obvious enough he didn’t mean that. He had really asked, _how long was I dead for?_

Richie let out a long breath through puffed cheeks. It wasn’t a hard question, just a loaded one. Like if the situation were a baked potato, it would have butter, sour cream, chives, shredded cheese, bacon—the whole nine yards. “It’s been... not too long.” Any attention that wasn’t dedicated toward keeping Eddie alive was focusing on keeping his voice as steady as he could make it. “I dunno exactly, but it couldn’t have been more than like, twelve hours or something.” It was the worst twelve hours of Richie’s life, no competition. It wasn’t as bad as leaving Derry the first time because he had intentions of staying in touch with the people he was leaving behind. It wasn’t as bad as when he nearly got his first ever real performance canceled, because he knew in the back of his mind that he could just try again. It wasn’t as bad as watching someone get proposed to after one of his shows, the man claiming that it was Richie who had given him the confidence to give his girl a ring, because Richie had always thought that he was one of those guys who marriage just wasn’t suited for. It wasn’t as bad as holding his father’s hand as he passed away because he did it with a smile on his face, and Richie still had his mother. It wasn’t as bad as when Richie got a call from Maine saying his mother had a stroke and there had been no one there to help since Richie was off fucking around in California because he still had his career. It wasn’t as bad as getting another call from Maine ten years later and his childhood memories hitting him like a bag of bricks to the face because he was still oblivious as to what he was about to get himself into. Nothing was as bad as watching Eddie die in his arms and not being able to do anything about it, not being able to get him out, not being able to die down there with him. “It wasn’t that long,” Richie said with a smile that was miles away from meeting his eyes. 

Off in the distance, the faint sound of a siren could be heard. Richie looked out the window and saw an ambulance speeding down Main Street and turning onto Neibolt. If it continued, it would go straight by Jackson (by _Eddie’s house_ his horrible brain supplied for absolutely no reason). Richie scrambled out of the car and flagged them down, the vehicle screeching to a halt instead of flying by. Paramedics came out of the ambulance like maggots crawling out of a corpse (something Richie had seen a few too many times), all of them rushing to Richie, which made sense. He looked like shit, but most of the blood on him wasn’t his own.

“No! Not me, I’m fine!” Richie looked over to Eddie. “He’s the one who’s fucking dying!” 

“Holy shit,” cursed a paramedic who was taking in the bloody sight that was Eddie Kaspbrak. Another paramedic elbowed him but the shock was evident in her eyes as well. 

With the ambulance and the noise and the doctors, it all became real again. Eddie was dying, no matter how calmly he acted about it. He needed help. Richie felt his hands begin to shake again, something anxiety had made them do for as long as he could remember. A nice looking paramedic led Richie to the back of the ambulance, putting a shock blanket over his shoulders. She was talking quietly, obviously trying to distract him from Eddie, but it wasn’t working; Richie couldn’t drag his eyes off Eddie if he wanted to.

A paramedic came over to Eddie quickly, and Eddie was almost scared to let the man touch him. Deft and practiced hands carefully moved the shirt from the wound to look, and Eddie grimaced. The paramedic made a noise but quickly pressed his hand against the injury.

Eddie cried out at the pressure, shaking his head to whatever the man was saying as he rambled out, “oh God- I’m going- I’m going to die aren’t I? I’m going to die again _,_ and it’s going to hurt, and I’m not-“ He inhaled sharply and coughed. “I’m not going to-“ Another cough, but this time with the paramedic interrupting him.

“They’re coming over with a stretcher right now. You’ll be fine. What’s your name?”

Eddie swallowed thickly, and ignored how his nose bled. “Edward- Eddie Kaspbrak,“ he managed. “It’s Edward, Edward Kaspbrak but my mom- she called me Eddie- she- I-“ And then another inhale as the panic of the situation set in again.

“Sir, I need you to calm-“

His head lolled and he ignored him. “Mommy-“ 

“I need you to calm down.” The man in blue said again as he turned to look for a second. “Look, the stretcher is here. We’re going to have to pick you up, Mr. Kaspbrak. Eddie-“ Eddie looked up, and he hated that he was crying again. “Eddie, it’s going to hurt, but we need to get you into the ambulance so we can help, alright?” 

He nodded, and it preceded the most painful moments of his life. The paramedic, his name tag said Jon, gave Eddie a wad of gauze to bite down on, before the raven nodded again. Jon helped him out of the vehicle, and even behind the medical fabric, he couldn’t bite down a loud shout as he was moved, a loud, blood-curdling scream, the kind that made three kids in Bassey Park freeze what they were doing to look up, one that faded slowly into heavy breathing and grunting noises as he was helped onto the travel pram.

Being flat on his back made him panic briefly as the pain blinded him. Suddenly he was back laying in the sewers, dying. His own long, soft fingers (too soft, much too soft, not like Richie’s, Richie’s were calloused and worn and familiar and-) dug into the edge of the gurney as they strapped him in, and his eyes adjusted to looking at the starless sky that was fading to dawn. It must have been close to seven. He caught sight of Richie, sitting on the edge of an opened ambulance, and he made a noise, “Richie-“ he let out, just as scared as he had been upon first being impaled, and like then, he was pulled from Richie and brought to a different ambulance. _“Richie!_ Richie, I swear to God if you don’t get your ugly fucking glasses over here I’m-“ and then he was cut off by another cough, more blood spitting up, this time harder to cough out due to laying down. The paramedics accommodated though, and soon he was in the back of an ambulance with an oxygen mask quickly being pulled over his face.

Richie bit down on his lip hard enough to draw blood (but what was a little more blood loss?) when he saw how the paramedics handled Eddie. They weren’t cruel, but they were fast, and that made it painful. Richie knew damn well that if Eddie was screaming then it was bad. It was pain and pain and more _pain._

“Sir?”

The blanket around Richie’s shoulders was tugged away, but he didn’t feel it. All he heard was a twelve-year-old boy calling out for his overbearing mother because he didn’t know what to do without her. “Eds,” Richie called out, getting to his feet and trying to step forward, but the nice-looking paramedic grabbed his arm. “Sir, you have to stay here.” He couldn’t read her name tag between the cracks and smudges and blood on his glasses, but he could loosely make out a D and an R and a Y. He thought Derry would be an awful name so hopefully her name was Darcy. 

“He-he’s crying, Darcy,” Richie said, his voice cracking like he was twelve too. “He’s cuh-crying and he’s hurt and it’s my fault.” He tugged at his arm but her grip stayed strong. 

“Sir, calm down. Your friend will be okay.” She didn’t sound like she was so sure of that. “Can you tell me your name?” She put a hand on his shoulder only to immediately pull it back. Her palm was covered in blood. Richie’s blood. Her kind face suddenly morphed into something more serious. “Sir, we need you to get in the ambulance. You’re severely injured.” 

“You don’t think I fucking know that?! I’m not leaving him again!” Richie felt a line of blood drip from his lips and he spit it out. He told himself he didn’t know why that had made him yell, but he knew more than he cared to admit. Tiny crimson drops got on the navy of Darcy’s uniform. 

“Richie,” she said firmly, taking his name straight out of Eddie’s mouth. It made Richie sick. “Sit down. You’re not in your right mind.”

“Eddie!” Richie yanked on his arm, and Darcy didn’t so much let go rather than lose her grip. Richie took off into a sprint and caught the ambulance doors closing. Blood trailed from the stretcher Eddie laid on. There was so _much_. “If you don’t fucking let me in, I’ll rip the goddamn doors off,” Richie hissed, feeling as if he really could rip the doors off their hinges if need be. Luckily, they let him in without a word. Richie climbed in, and rudely pushed a paramedic off his seat so he could be as close to Eddie as possible. 

“Eds- Eddie, I’m here. I’m _here.”_

Richie hated how Eddie couldn’t keep his eyes open for more than a few seconds at a time. “Don’t you dare die on me, Eds. Don’t you _fucking_ dare. Not again.” The last words came out as a nearly inaudible whisper. 

Then there was a hand on his back. “Sir, I think-“ 

“I’m fucking fine,” Richie snapped coldly. “Eddie’s dying. Help him, not me.”

Everything was blurred around the edges, and Eddie realized startlingly that it was similar to being drunk. Blackout drunk. Like maybe he wouldn’t remember this later. He couldn’t talk with the oxygen mask on, but he could feel his heart rate slowing and calming down even just with one familiar face. He told himself that he’d be just as calm if it would have been any of the Losers next to him, but a different part of him called himself a liar. That would be his own dirty little secret to keep to himself though. 

The paramedics were checking his stats, a hand pressed into the pulse at his throat, a flashlight blinded his vision, someone spoke too loudly by his ear, and eventually it got to the point where he was so overwhelmed that all he could hear were sirens and a heartbeat. The reassurances from the people meant nothing, and he ignored them as he locked eyes with Richie and blinked drowsily, eyes fluttering open before he forced them wide, as if to keep himself awake. His head fell back though, and he just tried to focus on that. Don’t fall asleep. Do not pass out. _Eddie Kaspbrak you will not die here again._

The ride was long, and the bumps were painful, but he managed to stare very intently at a screw on the ceiling of the cabin until they pulled into the hospital parking lot. Did Derry have a hospital? He didn’t think so, but he was having a hard time remembering. They must be in the city then. The city... the city he didn’t remember the name of.

When the oxygen mask came off, it pulled him back into a state of body. He blinked around, gasping for breath as the doors of the ambulance opened and suddenly voices were shouting in his ear, doctors and surgeons waiting with a proper hospital gurney for him. He got lifted and set directly onto it. He didn’t really remember entering the hospital, but he took note of Richie being there, and he heard Richie yelling that he was fine, to help Eddie first. _Stubborn asshole._

He wasn’t wrong though. Even Eddie would have said to help Eddie first. He knew he was dying; he could feel it. When had the lights gone out? No- no that was just his eyes closing, but he couldn’t keep them open, and every time he blinked, it ended with his eyes shut again. _Fuck_ , he was tired. He needed his inhaler. He needed his mom. He needed....

What did he need, again?

When the ambulance rolled to a stop and Eddie was taken out so quickly that if Richie hadn’t been glued to his side for the past some-odd hours he probably would have been left behind. Paramedics got Eddie on a gurney and pushed him through the set of swinging double doors that led to God-only-knows-where. A burly-looking security guard stopped Richie from following Eddie any further. A tired-looking receptionist pointed him in the direction of the waiting room. The nice-looking paramedic from earlier (Derry? Delaney?) showed up not long after Richie had begun restlessly pacing around the mostly empty waiting room. 

She put a hand on his shoulder (why the hell was everyone putting their hands on his shoulder?) and asked in a voice that was much too sweet to be sincere, “honey, will you come with me?” 

Richie scowled and shrugged her hand off. “Are you fucking serious?” There was no time for Richie to lay down and relax while doctors yanked sharp bits of rock out of his back and sewed him back together. Richie couldn’t be out of it if Eddie needed him, if something happened and he wasn’t there. “You can do whatever the hell you want to me when Eddie’s out of this place.” Eddie probably wouldn’t be out for days. Maybe weeks. Maybe more. “I need to make a call,” he said, abruptly changing the topic. “Where’s a phone I can use?”

Delaney(?) sighed and pointed to the front desk, mumbling something about blood on the floor. Richie looked down and saw that he was leaving a trail of the stuff behind him with every step he took. You’d think after all the hours that had passed since he had banged himself up that the cuts would have stopped bleeding, but no. The tiny pieces of rock lodged in Richie’s back reopened the wounds with any movement he made, and he was moving around a lot. His arms weren’t in great shape either. They were covered in dried and fresh blood, moldy dirt and purpling bruises. But he couldn’t feel it. He couldn’t feel a thing. He had gone completely numb hours ago. 

Richie approached the front desk, the exhausted receptionist snapping wide awake when he saw the state Richie was in. “Uh... can I help you?” 

“Can I use your phone.” It wasn’t a question. A tiny part of Richie winced at how rude he was being toward the poor receptionist, but a much bigger part of him didn’t give a single shit. “I gotta call some frien-... I’ve got some family over in Derry. They don’t know what’s going on.”

Richie said family because he knew that was a guarantee that he’d get to use the phone. That was all. But when he said it aloud it didn’t feel weird. The Losers were more of a family to him in the past week then his blood relatives had been in the past twenty-seven years. And Richie was pretty much cut off from the family once Maggie died. Mike had welcomed him back to Derry with open arms. Not just Richie but all the Losers. It was like the past twenty-seven years hadn’t happened and they were all twelve or thirteen meeting up at the Quarry to go cliff diving. It was like meeting up with family. Richie thought that maybe this was what people meant when they said family didn’t end in blood. 

For a blissful second, everything was okay. Then someone picked up on the other end of the phone, and Richie was thrown back into his ugly reality.

“Bill?” Richie didn’t wait for a reply before firing off. “Bill, it’s me.” There was no need to specify who. He had disappeared from the Townhouse. There was no way they hadn’t noticed his absence. It would have been too quiet without him. “You guys need to come to Bangor. I’m-I’m in the hospital- well, not really. I’m in the waiting room of the hospital even though I should probably be on an operating table because there’s blood everywhere and I don’t even know if it’s mine but you guys all need to get here like right now because I went back to Neibolt even though I know I shouldn’t have but I went because I had a dream with Eddie and Stan-“

Stan. 

Richie had forgotten about Stan. 

Stan who was buried alive in some cemetery in Georgia a million miles away from here. 

“Holy _fucking_ shit, _Stan!_ I forgot about Stan! I need to- fuck. Someone call Stan. Yes, actually _him_ , not just his wife because Stan’s alive too.” He knew how it sounded; it sounded fucking insane. But there was no time to explain the entirety of the situation. He just needed Bill to trust him enough to get their undead childhood friend dug up, grave robber style. “Get here right the fuck now, Bill. And I’m serious! This isn’t a fucking joke, okay?. It’s _Eddie_ and _Stan._ Even _I_ wouldn’t joke about them. So get your ass in gear and fucking _go._ I’m at whatever Bangor hospital is closest to Derry and-“

A tap on the shoulder. It was a doctor. 

“Are you here for Eddie Kaspbrak?” 

The doctor looked sad. 

“Eddie is alive, Bill,” Richie hissed into the phone. “Hurry up and get here.” Then he handed the now-bloody phone back to the receptionist and turned to the doctor. “Is he alright?”

The doctor frowned. 

“I’m sorry.” 

“For what? He’s okay, isn’t he?”

_No._

This wasn’t happening again. 

“Your friend didn’t make it.”

It couldn’t be happening. 

“Make it where? Does he need to be transferred?”

_Not again._

“Eddie Kaspbrak is dead.”

And the world stopped spinning.

  
  
  


_Bill Denbrough Answers the Phone_

Bill hadn’t slept well. None of them had. 

The night before, Bill Denbrough had led the group back to the Townhouse, morale low and hearts even lower. He held the door open for them all and thought to himself, _there should be two more of us; there should be two more._

Bill looked out into the night.

Derry was bigger by plenty than it had been when he was little. Where there used to be ice cream stands and hang out spots stood banks, upon banks, upon banks. Adult things. Insurance buildings, steak houses, pharmacies containing every kind of NyQuil ever invented because the town had grown nearly into a city like the kids had grown _nearly_ into adults. 

Still though, Bill could see the stars. Even with the light pollution, they shone dully through the haze of Derry's atmosphere. He sighed and looked to the twilight, blinked once, and thought once more that _there should be two more_ before he went inside and let the door click shut behind him. The thought itched in the back of his throat, in the way that he knew if he tried to vocalize it, his stutter would make it unbearable, like a scratched record from before his time. Bill watched everyone disperse, Richie starting up the stairs without hesitation, arms folded in front of his stomach like a child who was sick. “R-Ri-Rich-ee,” Bill tried, eyes pinching shut in self-annoyance. He lifted a hand as Richie froze as if he could reach him, despite the fact that the man was a million miles away. _A million miles beneath Derry,_ Bill thought unhelpfully, _where we pulled him away. That’s where he is._

At some point, while they were all at the Quarry, Bill wasn’t quite sure when, and if he tried to pinpoint it he probably would have burst into tears, it dawned on him what exactly it was that Richie had tried to do. In between Richie’s choked sobs, it set in that if they hadn’t pulled him out, if they hadn’t taken him kicking and screaming, Richie would have died down there. He would have stayed to die, to get crushed under the rubble just so that Eddie wouldn’t have to be alone. They all knew how much Eddie didn’t want to be down there by himself; they all knew how scared he was. He was the one with the most terror-driven adrenaline pumping through his veins, the most death-fearing, the most scared. And he went down there anyway. And that made Eddie the bravest of them all. 

Richie's shoulders were tense, and Bill decided he didn’t like it. He had thought Ben was overall the most physically intimidating of the group. He was tall, fit, and if he wanted, he could be a real ass sometimes. _Maybe_ Mike, but he gave off a less intimidating vibe and more of a… _dominating_ one, for the lack of a better word. Now though, Bill realized how broad Richie was as he turned towards him, fingers dug into the grey jacket that wasn’t really his. Grief was said to make people small, but Bill thought Richie had never looked more dangerous before now. Dangerous to them or to himself, he wasn’t sure. “I-it’s still uh-eh-earl-ee,” he tried and gestured vaguely to the bar area, where everyone else had floated to. “Wuh-weh-we- we _ee_ -“ Bill huffed and his fists clenched as tight as his eyelids. He heard a scoff and opened his eyes again to see Richie smiling a smile so soft that Bill wondered if Richie himself was even in there anymore. His eyes were lined so pink they were bloodshot. If Bill didn’t know any better, he would have thought that Richie had been drugged. But no, it was the redness of recent tears. 

Bill let out a huff of what probably looked like amusement through his nose, and a small, sad grin crept its way onto his face as well. 

There was a moment between them, but it was gone the second Richie blinked and it became obvious how broken the young life behind those eyes was.

“Are you two coming?” Beverly asked, popping into the scene. She glanced between them and saw their solemn expressions, which made her pleasant one crack, “what’d I miss?”

“Nothing,” Richie said quietly, then cleared his throat in the way that forty-year-old men sometimes did. For the first time since arriving in Derry, Richie sounded his age. “I uh- I just think I’m going to go upstairs,” he’d said, nodding his head up, “Sleep, I think,” he lied through his teeth a bit too obviously to everyone except himself. Bill thought Richie looked like he believed himself like he thought any of them would sleep well at all that night. 

“Just one drink,” Bev tried, and Bill shifted his weight to step forward, leaning against the banister at the bottom of the stairs, looking up.

“Eh-it’s on uh-us.” Bill tried, smiling hopefully.

“Maybe next time,” Richie said flatly, taking another step and not meaning it at all. 

Bill panicked and quickly went around the railing and onto the first step. “Rich-“ he tried, “ _please_ , I thuh-think that it’s best if we all-“ he swallowed, “stick together right nuh-now. We need to rely on each uh-ther.”

“No, Bill,” Richie said again, more firmly, as a hand went out onto the railing. He gripped it with white knuckles. “I need to be _alone_ right now. Just try to understand that.”

“We’re here,” Bill said insistently, going up the steps to follow. He got to the halfway point where there was a small landing before the stairs continued, and then glanced to Bev, who watched with pursed lips. “What you nuh- _need_ is—“ Bill started up the second half and got right behind Richie before he was interrupted.

“Would you fucking _stop?”_ Richie spat out, turning. He stood a solid foot and a half taller with the one step between them, and Bill's foot slipped as he stumbled, startled. His joints tensed as his heel slipped down the three steps he’d made since the space between the lower level of stairs. He lost balance and smacked his hand down onto the railing and looked up. The faintest wave of concern washed over the faded blue of Richie’s eyes before he seemed to tense up more and all emotion fell from his face. He shook his head in near-disgust, scoffing, and started back up the stairs. Bill pulled his other foot back from where it had stayed on the step he’d been on originally, coming up from an awkward lunge. He watched Richie until he disappeared around a corner. A bedroom door opened and clicked shut distantly like it was trying to be as quiet as possible. Bill almost would have preferred it if Richie had slammed it; the click just meant he was clearly thinking even through the grief, or he simply couldn’t muster the energy to slam it. 

Bill heaved a sigh and lifted a hand in exasperation, then scrunched his nose as he felt emotion swell uncomfortably there. _It wasn’t supposed to end like this,_ Bill’s mind groaned for him, mourning. A cruel sense of irony hissed in one ear, _your endings always were the worst; this one is no different._

Bill made a noise in his throat, and his hand flew out to slam into the wall beside him where the heel of his palm made contact. He had to bite back a frustrated scream. Picture frames shook in suspense, holding their breath for what Bill Denbrough would do next.

“Bill!” Beverly chided as Bill stood upright from where he’d leaned into his attack on the innocent wall. He heard rapid footsteps before he felt her hands on his biceps, turning him. “Bill don’t- _oh,_ ” she breathed, and his lips pulled back. “Bill you’re _crying,_ ” she said as if he hadn’t noticed. 

“I’m fuh-fine. I-“ Bill sucked in a shaky breath and looked up to her, to her glassy eyes, and then to his feet, where he shook his head. “I failed them,” he said quietly, bringing his palm to his other hand, where he soothed the ache from hitting the wall. “I stuh-started this all. Twenty-seven years ago _I_ suh-signed their death certificates ah-and _now_ -“ He lost his words and instead just breathed out and tried not to think, but it was hard when his thoughts were the loudest they’d ever been. 

Bev didn't comment for a second, and Bill felt his stomach churn in confirmation. “You weren’t the one that took Stan’s life,” she soothed quietly, and he looked further away, all the way to Atlanta. “You didn’t throw the stake. _Eddie_ did and-“ There was an abrupt stop, and her nails dug into Bill’s shirt where she had her hands on his arms.

He found her expression, where she stared, pale, into some non-existent TV, where she watched herself give Eddie the thing that killed him. “I-... It was me. I told him- Bill, I was the one who said-“ Her eyebrows pinched and her hands pulled back from Bill to drag over her face and end over her mouth. She looked almost instantly on the verge of tears, and now it was Bill who was holding _her,_ his hands on her elbows carefully. “I told him it could kill monsters,” she whispered. “He’s dead because of _me.”_

Bill watched her blink and look away, lips with smudged lipstick pulled back into a cringing grimace, and he cupped her cheek and then let his hand fall to her shoulder. “No,” he tried, not sure how to argue with her. He knew she’d told Eddie to believe. “Nuh-no, you didn’t cuh-kill Eddie. It's _Richie_ we’re talking about _,_ Bev. Eddie wouldn’t have let uh-uh-anything happen to Richie. This was all Eh- _Eddie_. If he didn’t have the stake then-then he would’ve used his damn ah-aspirator if he had to. He would’ve saved Ruh-Richie in any universe that he could’ve.” 

That seemed to help his own nerves too.

There was a clearing of a throat (the same kind that Richie had done, the one specific to middle-aged men) and Bill looked down the stairs over Beverly’s shoulder to see Ben standing in the doorway with a hand in a fist hovering in front of his mouth, like he really _had_ just been clearing his throat. 

Bev turned, and Bill felt her relax in his hands when she saw him. He smiled and let go, she managed to grin weakly back at him and away she’d gone.

Ben watched only Bill while she came to him though, and Bill furrowed his brow when she hugged him and Ben, who usually hid his emotions behind a window, seemed completely neutral and just watched Bill.

He hugged back, whispered something to her. Bev pulled back and nodded, stood on her toes and kissed his cheek, then went to the other room.

Bill was wrong. Well, _right_ , but also sort of wrong now. Ben _was_ , in fact, the most intimidating. Ben came up the stairs, one at a time, slowly, and then stood in front of Bill and looked down at him. “How’s your hand?” His voice was quiet and cracked from the whisper.

“Fine,” Bill said back, watching his face for any turn of emotions.

Why Bill had thought Ben was capable of anything other than understanding, Bill didn’t know. 

Ben’s lips pursed and his brow furrowed slightly, and Bill realized that Ben was just trying not to cry, and _that’s_ why he wasn’t showing anything now. Well, trying his damndest not to, at least. Ben pulled Bill quickly into a hug, and it felt tighter than the one between him and Bev looked. Like maybe he was trying to comfort Bill, but also trying to find comfort _in_ Bill, like the child in there somewhere still recognizing him as the leader, as the one who made everything better. Bill slowly hugged back, and with a voice so quiet you could miss it, he whispered, “I miss Stan.”

He felt Ben nod fervently against him. “And Eddie.” 

Bill looked up with his eyes to prevent tears from falling, but _shit_ , if they weren’t close. He nodded too, less aggressively than Ben, but still there.

They stood like that for a handful of seconds more before Ben inhaled and pulled away. He sighed out and held Bill at his shoulders. “Alright,” he said, an octave lower than his normal voice to get the emotion out of it now. 

“Alright,” Bill agreed.

“Let’s go drink until we throw up,” Ben suggested, and Bill scoffed out a wet laugh. “I’ve got this really neat party trick with lemons I’ll show you guys.”

And then they drank. They drank, and they drank, and they drank. They _were_ forty, though, and by the time twelve-thirty a.m rolled around, it was just Bill and Mike left.

They had been sitting in silence for ten minutes before Bill stood and put his empty glass in the sink. It clinked loudly, and Mike asked if he was heading up. 

Bill nodded, realized he couldn’t see him as he glanced to the back of Mike’s head, then added “yeah, I have a flight home the day after tomorrow. I was ready to reschedule it but… guess I don’t have to anymore.”

“Ah,” Mike said simply, “but to have a home, for a nomad there is none.” He slurred and looked to his drink.

Bill scoffed. “To Florida, then,” he suggested, but it was less of a suggestion and more of a confirmation. After Derry, there was Florida.

Mike let out a sudden bark of laughter like he hadn’t thought of Florida in far too long. He glanced over his shoulder to Bill, smiling that bright, welcoming smile. It was the first sign of genuine joy Bill had seen since they’d gotten back, and in those deep dark eyes, Bill felt himself drown, crumble under the gaze of. His own smile faltered and his throat clenched uncomfortably. “Florida, then,” Mike agreed, _almost_ sly, _almost_ smug (as if Mike we’re capable of such things), but still grinning and watching for a second before going back to his drink, swishing it around in the glass. There wasn’t a lot left. 

That was the last he’d spoken to someone before morning. Bill had tossed and turned that night relentlessly, and he’d woken to his phone alarm going off at eight a.m.

He managed to drag himself out of bed with minimal emotion and got himself dressed in one of the mustard plaids he hadn’t worn yet on the trip over a white T-shirt with some jeans. 

Now not to be mistaken, Bill couldn’t cook, that was very much _not_ something on his resume of skills, but he could do what he called ‘not-burning-things.’ Still, he opted out, and decided he’d get cereal and milk down for the Losers. He knocked gently on doors, ignoring when he heard Ben call that “we’re up!” from what was clearly Bev’s room and not his own. She probably cried last night and asked him to come hold her. Likely nothing more than that. _Not with Ben,_ Bill mused to himself with a small smile, _they wouldn’t. Not so soon anyway. Ben would want it to be special. And Bev deserves a little something special._ He left it at that though, and knocked on Mike’s door, then on Richies, then on—

He held his hand up, and then he sighed and lowered it from room 204 where Eddie's suitcases inevitably sat strewn open on his bed. Bill thudded quickly down the stairs and toward the kitchen. He opened his phone to check messages, and, almost with a sense of _movie magic_ , it rang as he clicked on the screen. They had yet to exchange numbers, with everything going on, and so when Bill hit the green answer button, he was naive to the news he was about to receive.

It was Richie. In the hospital.

_With Eddie._

“Whoa- wh- Richie calm duh-down I can hardly-“ Bill paused and rested his hand on the bottom of the banister where the night before he’d been stupidly insistent on something he had no right to be insistent on. _And Stan!_ Richie had cried, and Bill’s stomach flipped. “And _Stan?_ What?”

Bill heard footsteps, and, not surprisingly, Mike was the first one to be coming down for breakfast. He was almost definitely awake for the day despite Bill, who felt sick as his stomach crawled with maggots that weren’t there. He opened his mouth and closed it a few times as he tried to interject, but Richie wouldn’t allow him to. Bill looked to Mike, and the man was smiling through closed lips in greeting, but when he saw Bill, the Losers’ Club unofficial official leader Bill Denbrough who was so rarely shaken, it fell to a face of concern, brow pinching. Mike hurried down the steps and joined Bill at the bottom as Richie hung up, not letting the man get in a single word.

“What's wrong? Are you alright? Bill?” Mike asked frantically, a hand landing on one of Bill’s thin shoulders. All Bill could do was stare at his now-black phone screen. “Eddie’s alive,” he whispered, and it was like he’d never even had a stutter. “Mikey, Eddie’s alive, and we _left_ him down there. Shit-... _Stan.”_

Mike's expression deepened as Bill looked quickly up and he grabbed tightly onto the sleeve of his shirt, “Mikey- yuh- yeh- you’ve gotta have Stan’s number still, right?” He asked weakly, bright eyes pleading as he felt a stray hair fall in front of them like they did so often when he was little. He felt young in all the worst ways; he felt vulnerable and helpless, so who was there to turn to but Mike Hanlon?

“Uh, yeah, I do but… I don’t think he’s going to… answer?” Mike tried slowly, concern clear like maybe Bill was going crazy, but when he looked a second longer, Bill knew he recognized not a curtain of crazy, but a curtain of sheer panic. His expression hardened and he nodded, saying, “just give me one minute. It’s upstairs, in my notebook. I brought it over from the library when I packed my stuff.”

Bill watched Mike go upstairs, and Mike's hand fell to the odd step, like a child running from the monster who hid in the dark of the basement. _Like Georgie always did_ , Bill thought, and suddenly he felt like nothing was wrong.

_There should be two more of us_ , his brain echoed, _and now there are._

When Mike came back, Bill called Stan’s cellphone, and a desperate woman answered.

  
  
  


_Eddie Kaspbrak Takes his Medication_

_1_

Eddie faded in and out sporadically. It was like he was floating in molasses, sometimes light enough to be on top, sometimes heavy enough to sink down. Then nothing. Then his whole body was on fire. Then nothing again.

It was strange, being dead. Eddie was Jewish, but not the kind of Jewish that Stan was. Not the kind of Jewish that only ate kosher and went to Temple, not the kind of Jewish that Bowers and his gang used to bully Stan for, but still Jewish, specifically on his father's side, and he believed in an afterlife of sorts. He believed in one, but he wasn’t sure he remembered it from last time. Now, he wasn’t sure he remembered it this time either. It was less of an afterlife, and more like a concrete sleep.

And then his whole body was lighting up, and it felt similar to the time before in the sewers, like when he’d been stung by a wasp when he was 17, except about a million times more vibrant. The lights were blinding, and he heard silence before an eruption of noise, all happy. There was a loud beeping as he gasped for air, and he reached out but his hand was brought down to his side by a doctor. “Mr. Kaspbrak, your heart stopped, we need-“ Eddie couldn’t help how he ignored the woman as she spoke, but in all fairness, he sort of ignored everyone. “-spbrak, can you please just calm-“

_And then the world was fading again, and he hadn’t even realized that he’d been injected with anesthesia as he watched the world go black._

_And then he dreamed. He dreamed for the first time in what felt like years. It all felt so vivid compared to the cold, empty darkness of death._

_It was a pleasant dream. One in the future, most likely, one in a decade. Where he was sitting on a beach, and despite just staring at the ocean, which moved rapidly around itself, he still knew he wasn’t alone. His friends were there; he could hear them somewhere in the back of his mind, playing volleyball, laughing, drinking Piña Coladas, getting caught in the rain, makin’ love at midnight, or do you have half a brain?_

_Someone sat down into the wooden lounger beside him with a Walkman, and he couldn’t see that it was a Walkman, but a part of him just knew._

_“Enjoying the view, Eddie Spaghetti?”_

_“I’d enjoy it better in good company,” he heard himself say but didn’t feel any part of him move. Like sleep paralysis but inside of a dream._

_“Ask and you shall receive, sweetheart.”_

_A hand to his face made him feel a soft kind of warmth he hadn’t felt in a long time._

He dreamed all the way through emergency surgery where they reconstructed parts of his stomach, spleen, one of his lungs, and his kidneys. They also had to put a brace against his spine where it had been fractured, and the whole thing took nearly four hours before he was stable enough for them to stop and call it a day. He would survive until they needed to go in and properly repair any remaining damage, which would likely not be for a few days. Not until he was stable.

_2_

Bill ran into the hospital at a comfortable jog, panicked but reserving his energy. Beverly had called Stan’s wife while they were driving. She was their best bet, and Patricia “call me Patty, please, that’s how Stuh-Stan would always introduce me to his friends” Uris, still mad with grief, was desperate enough for him to be alive that she agreed to pull him up, but swore them all to hell if he was still dead. 

It had probably been the worst phone call Beverly had the displeasure of holding, and that included the one from Mike.

Ben was hot on Bill’s heels, followed by Bev and Mike. Their group felt so small going into the hospital, and Bill Denbrough was heaving over the counter by the time they got to reception; he was fit, but still forty. “E-E-Ehd-... Ed-eh-“ He swallowed thickly, hating that the stutter came out when his emotions ran too high, and he grit his teeth. “For fuh-fuh-fucks sake- Eh-Edward. Edward Kaspbrak.”

_3_

Richie stumbled backward like he had just been punched. He hit the ground, and when he went to try and catch himself, his hand slipped in the pool of blood growing around his feet so he landed on his back. The numbness from before immediately disappeared and the pain he felt was a hot blinding white. 

_Eddie Kaspbrak is dead._

He felt his heart seize up. His breathing stopped completely. His eyes welled up with tears he didn’t even know he had left to give. 

_Eddie Kaspbrak is dead._

And just like that, his heart rate jumped up, and his lungs sucked in air faster than they ever had before. New gashes ripped through his skin, the grime and rocks in his back slashing him to shreds. Everything was black around the edges and Richie felt like he was on the verge of passing out but never quite getting to be unconscious. Nasty thoughts swirled around in his mind, making his brain throb against his skull. 

_Eddie Kaspbrak is dead._

How could Eddie be dead? It didn’t make sense. He had died once before, and then by some miracle of God or some fucking Turtle God, he was brought back. Granted, he was brought back in the sewers, where, if Richie had been just a minute too late, he would have bled out again. 

But he _wasn’t._

He was there in time. 

He did it. 

For once in his miserable fucking life, he did something right, and now Eddie had the audacity to _die?_

_Again?_

Richie had just gotten him back. He had just gotten him back. Eddie never got to have his last words, never got to say what he was going to say, never got to live the life he should have. Richie never got to shoot his shot, or tell Eddie about the Kissing Bridge, or say how he felt, or tell him that it wasn’t brainless flirting when they were kids, or that he was Richie’s first love and that he was loved. Eddie didn’t know how much he was loved, he didn’t know how wonderful he could make someone feel, or how his smile would light up the whole room, or how his stupid clapbacks were the highlight of some people’s week, or how when he would climb on top of someone in the hammock in the clubhouse, and they would lay there like it was their only time to be intimate as maybe something more than what they used to be, and he didn’t know that he was loved, _Eddie_ was so _loved_ he was-

_Eddie Kaspbrak is dead._

Richie wasn’t aware when he was picked up and taken to a hospital room. He didn’t process anything as a needle pricked his arm, and he wasn’t conscious when he was finally stitched back together. 

The first thing he knew when he woke up was that 

_Eddie Kaspbrak is dead._

“Eddie!” 

and that his back wasn’t bleeding. He sat up with a jolt. Everything ached, but it wasn’t painful. He looked around the room, and he was alone. Richie had always had mixed feelings about being alone. Being alone meant privacy, but that also meant he had to think. Richie wasn’t too fond of his thoughts. Never really had been. 

Richie pulled his knees to his chest, and he cried.

Eddie was gone for good. He wasn’t magically coming back this time, not unless the doctors were also evil-killer-space-clowns. God didn’t hand out third chances, hell, they didn’t even usually hand out second ones, and at this point, Richie didn’t believe in a God. Who could be so cruel to rip away the man someone loved as soon as he got to see it one last time? 

The door to Richie’s room opened and four blurs walked in. He didn’t have his glasses. He squinted and found the faint outline of them on a small table next to him. Eddie’s blood was gone, but the crack was still there. 

Bill came in first. Then Mike. Then Bev. Then Ben. 

Richie sobbed openly. He didn’t care anymore. He didn’t want to feel at all, so instead, he felt everything at once. 

“He’s _gone_ , guys,” he said, his voice cracking. “He’s gone, and it’s my fault. I don’t-... I don’t know what I’m gonna do!” He sobbed, sniffling grossly. “I held him, Bill! I held him in my arms, and he had a heartbeat! He bled to death again, and it was my fault. I can’t-... I can’t do this... I can’t live knowing that- that-... that-... knowing that he doesn’t _know_ . And he’ll _never_ know! I-...” Richie looked to the floor, lost. “I don’t wanna know either. I wanna forget again.” He knew he wouldn’t forget, not again, some part of him just _knew_ . They were in Bangor and he still had memories clear as day. “I wanna leave, and I wanna forget all this. Life was bland, but... but it didn’t hurt to _breathe.”_

_4_

Bill had been led to Richard Tozier’s room, despite having asked for Edward Kaspbrak. They said that the man that brought Eddie in had been pretty roughed up too, but at least he was conscious, and when Bill walked in, he hadn’t gotten in a word before Richie was spewing verbal shit everywhere.

He pursed his lips, and if it weren’t for the assurances that there had, in fact, been and an Edward Kaspbrak brought in with Richie, he almost would have thought that Rich was going crazy. It’s not that Bill didn’t trust the Losers, but he knew Richie had to have figured things out on his own first. Everyone listened to the distress as he sat down on the foot of the hospital bed.

_Knowing that he doesn’t_ know _._

Bill thought it was incredibly cruel, and frankly, a steaming pile of bullshit. They had all seen Richie mourn, and now they had to watch again. It would have been clear to anyone that Richie thought of Eddie as something more than a friend. “Richie I-“

And there was a knock at the door. A woman in a white coat came in (the same woman that performed on Eddie, but they wouldn’t know that), and smiled at the group, at the family. It was a somewhat sympathetic smile, but she offered a polite “how are we feeling?” She read the room and followed promptly with “ah. Well, almost losing a loved one is hard on anyone, but your friend is... he’s one hell of a fighter.”

Richie heard _almost_ and felt like he might go into cardiac arrest. 

Bills brow furrowed. “What?” He breathed out, “b-but Richie said-“

The doctor furrowed her brow, but her face lit up with realization. “Oh! Oh _heavens_ no. He did die, scientifically speaking. His heart stopped for 3 minutes, and we had to use the defibrillator, but he’s… well, ‘fine’ is a strong word, but he _will_ be fine, and that’s what’s important. We have a new wave of residents; one of them must have assumed the worst and came with bad news. I’m terribly sorry. I’ll have a word with them all. This is the second time it’s happened with them,” she said in a voice that wasn’t the regular sort of demeaning kindness doctors usually used. She sounded tired, but when she smiled it was weak but genuine. “I’ll admit though, it did look bleak,” she finished off, tapping her clipboard, but then a warm grin took place, and she nodded in assurance, adjusting her glasses. “But no, he’s resting now. He’s just asleep. We’re waiting for the anesthesia to wear off.”

“I’ll be damned,” Bill breathed out and smiled as he looked to the other Losers, then pointedly to Richie. “Only that son of a bitch could die twice and still be breathing,” he determined. Then, like if he didn’t say it he wouldn’t exist, Bill added breathlessly, “Eddie Kaspbrack.” 

Ben shook his head in disbelief, but he was smiling too, and soon Bev joined. “That little hypochondriac,” Ben said, his tone something akin to wonder. 

“It’s probably all the hand sanitizer,” Bev added, “not even greywater could wash all of that off, not with how much he goes through.” She looked more alive in that moment than she had in a long time. 

_Yeah_ , Richie thought solemnly, unable to articulate words. _Eddie has always been one hell of a fighter. Put up a real good one. The fucker had to die twice to actually-_

Then Richie laughed. It was abrupt and something verging on being hysterical, but he didn’t care. Everyone shot him a strange look, but he didn’t care. Richie could not have given less of a shit about anything, because Eddie was alive. He leaned back in his bed (only to sit right back up because _ow_ ) and wiped at his eyes. The waterworks were still flowing but they were relieved now, and Richie didn’t know the last tears he’d cried that were anything good.

“God damn, doc!” He looked to the ceiling hiding his mad grin under his hand. “You can’t fuck with me like that!” Without wasting a second more, Richie flung the sheets off his bed, grateful that he wasn’t hooked up to any IV. They must have pumped him full of drugs while he was still out because when he stood up the room tilted on its side. Or maybe it was the blood loss. Maybe both, he wasn’t sure. He stumbled forward, reaching for the closest thing to him to break his fall. The closest thing to him was Ben, who he grabbed onto and nearly took to the floor. Luckily, Ben ( _the ripped motherfucker_ ) caught him and pulled him back to his feet, holding onto his shoulders to keep him steady. He was clearly a bit concerned at how Richie hadn’t even been able to stand up, along with everyone else in the room, but Richie didn’t care. He didn’t faze him in the slightest. He planted a wet kiss on Ben’s cheek knowing that it was kinda gross. (Bev wouldn’t mind if he borrowed her man for a minute. They shared cigarettes all the time as kids; what was the difference?) Ben's face went red either way and he made a noise, but soon Richie was moving on. Richie turned to the doctor in white and asked, “where is he?” He couldn’t _not_ go see Eddie. He had promised not to leave his side again. He would be there for as long as Eddie would have him. 

For the first time since he found Eddie in the sewers, a real smile was present on his face. His lips were pulled upward in an expression he hadn’t worn since Jade of the Orient. Eyes were the windows to the soul, but Richie’s betrayed his wants and always showed what was on the inside. Right now they spoke a thousand joyous words. They were the eyes of a man in love.

The doctor came over instantly to Richie. “Mr. Tozier-“ she chided, “let me at least- nurse!” She—Dr. Bentel—called into the hallway, “can I get a wheelchair in here?” Her voice quieted as she spoke more directly to Richie, saying, “you can come see him, but your iron levels are dangerously low, and your body is still trying to come back from losing blood.” _Oh great,_ Richie’s brain unhelpfully supplied, _now you’re fucking anemic._ “You could pass out if you move too suddenly. We have to be careful while you recover or you could hurt yourself,” she explained. 

Richie couldn’t tell if he loathed or absolutely loved the idea of being shoved around in a wheelchair. It would be slow and painful being pushed around by someone he didn’t know, unable to move independently, but if he really tried for it, he could probably get someone (someone being Beverly Marsh) to push him down the hallway really fast so he crashed through swinging double doors at the end. What? It had been on his bucket list since he was like, nine. Sue him, he liked to have fun. Fuck off. 

Quickly though, a wheelchair was offered, and they were on their way.

Eddie was asleep, she had explained, in a medically induced coma. He would be until the drugs wore off within the next hour or so. They had to induce one just because of the levels of pain he’d been in, but when he woke up, he would likely be loopy on how much morphine was in his system. All of this was told as they walked, and just as she did with Richie's room, she knocked before entering, but it was empty save for one body. A _breathing_ body.

That body, perhaps, looked the most at peace it had ever been in its life. Eddie was completely lax, paler now, without the dirt and grim over his porcelain skin, and with bags under his eyes, but calm, sleeping. IVs were plugged in his arm, along with bags of blood (AB+, Eddie made sure people knew, just in case). Even despite assurance, he did look quite like death, but Dr. Bentel just smiled at him. “Here we are, but maybe not everyone at once. I don’t want him to be too excited if he wakes up. His heart isn’t the best right now since it’s working hard to pump blood.”

Richie hadn’t anticipated Eddie being awake. In fact, he would have been appalled if Eddie was even semi-lucid. But to see him looking like death warmed over was still jarring. His eyes were hollow and his skin was nearly transparent. All the Losers (minus two) stood, or in Richie’s case, sat, in the doorway of Eddie’s room, staring. None of them said a word. They knew who was going to go in first. 

Richie wheeled himself forward, Doctor Bentel saying something about giving them some time alone and shutting the door behind her with a soft click. Now that he was close, Richie could see the almost reassuringly even rise and fall of Eddie’s chest. The heart monitor didn’t make any noise like they did in movies, but it still tracked the beating of Eddie’s hard-working heart. Eddie had the tiniest frown stuck on his face, his eyebrows furrowed ever so slightly. Even now, he was still in pain. Richie would have taken it all away in a second if he could.

“Hey, Eds,” Richie whispered as if he could somehow wake him if he were too loud. Richie took Eddie’s limp hand in his own, careful not to touch any of the IVs coming out of his arm. His hand was like ice, somehow limp and stiff at the same time—malleable but resistant, like a corpse. “I dunno if you can hear me. Doc didn’t say, and I didn’t think to ask. Sorry.” He ran his thumb over Eddie’s knuckles, glancing to the heart monitor once again before his gaze was drawn back to Eddie. It was hard to look away. “You were um... you were dead.” His voice was strained. “Yeah. For like three minutes there you were dead and they uh... they told me that. So... so for while I thought- well, actually, I didn’t think. I just... I don’t really know. Shut down, I guess. Didn’t think I was gonna get to see you breathe again, Spaghetti.” Richie didn’t know when the last time he used that nickname was. Decades. Probably twenty-seven years. “So uh... I’m not counting on that happening again, but I know that you’ll wanna go back home after you’re better. And the doctors say you’re gonna get better. All it’s gonna take is some time, a little bit of rehab. And we have time. All the time in the world.” Richie brushed a few hairs out of Eddie’s face. He looked so much more tousled than usual. The usually gelled hair was strewn about, and his dark bags were so suffocatingly dark. “But you’ll wanna go back home eventually. We wound up on opposite sides of the country, believe it or not. LA and the Big Apple. Who’da thunk it? We always talked about sticking together after high school. Now look at us.” Separated. Alone. Scared. Hurt. Lost. “A couple a’ Losers scared to hell and back. You wanna get outta here as soon as possible, Eds, you told me that yourself. And trust me, I’m with you. I wanna leave. It’s just-... well, not everything that came out of Derry was all that bad.” Richie’s ears turned ever so slightly pink with embarrassment. “I gotta tell you something before we all go our own ways. I-...” Richie gnawed on his lower lip. “It’s like-...”

_If your hair was winter fire, I’d be Haystack._

_I’d wither away for you._

_If you were January embers, I’d be a poet._

_I’d sing songs of your contradictory beauty._

_If your heart burned, I’d burn there too._

_I’d lay down my life for you._

He couldn’t say it. 

“It’s like nothing at all. Never mind.”

One would think after forty years, after four _fucking_ decades, Richie would have found it within himself to admit it. Admit to the dirty little secret he had harbored away for so long. But maybe the clown was right. Maybe he shouldn’t touch the other boys, the other men. Maybe some skeletons should remain in the closet. 

Richie let go of Eddie’s hand. But he didn’t leave. And he didn’t look away.

Eddie didn’t wake, but his fingers twitched at the loss of contact. He stayed unconscious, and the Losers didn’t interrupt Richie and Eddie, not for quite some time. Not before Eddie stirred.

_5_

Eddie was out for at least another fifteen minutes, maybe longer, before he blinked his eyes open. The room was bright, it was white, and he realized, with a strange sense of comfort, that it was a hospital room. 

He blinked, eyes never quite opening all the way as the drowsiness kept him sedated. “Ngk,” he said eloquently. He felt like he had just broke his arm when he was thirteen, sitting in the doctor's office while they waited for his x-rays to come back. His throat hurt, and he cleared it, coughing lightly. He glanced down and lifted his hand lightly to find he was hooked up in multiple places, and his brow raised sleepily. Then he saw Richie. He grinned because it was _Richie_ . Eddie smiled as broadly as he could manage to, and his voice was rough and coarse, but he hummed out a quiet but light, “beep beep, _beeeep,_ hi Rich-ee.” He slurred without purpose, completely out of it as Dr. Bentel had said, high on painkillers. 

Richie zoned out about two minutes after his impromptu speech where he nearly tore his own brain in two trying to figure out what he wanted to say and how he wanted to say it. Most of the time, Richie was non-stop motion, always on the go, but he was exhausted, and he _looked_ exhausted. So he didn’t move at all. He didn’t know how long it was, but when Eddie began to make noise, Richie snapped out of his trance. 

“I didn’t say anything,” Richie defended himself from ghostly bullets. He stiffened when Eddie put his hand in his hair. It wasn’t like Eddie was combing through his thick, curly, ebony locks or anything, he was more so patting Richie’s greasy head like one would to a dog. Then Eddie’s hand slid down and covered his face, smudging his already destroyed glasses, so a few more marks weren’t changing anything. Richie stuck out his tongue and licked Eddie’s palm like a child, but he wasn’t phased. That proved how loopy he was. He normally would have screamed about how gross it was. Eddie gave Richie’s cheek a little _pat pat_ and dropped his hand, seemingly content with the interaction. 

Hopefully, even if Eddie did hear what Richie had said, he was too drugged up to read between the lines. “How ya feelin’, Eds? ‘Cause you’ve died twice in less than twenty-four hours.” That was a chilling sentence Richie didn’t want to read into. “And you look like shit.”

Eddie hummed. “Feel like shit,” he confirmed, wiping the licked hand on his hospital blanket. He leaned back again, eyes closing for a second before he blinked them open again. 

He looked over to Richie. “I am _so_ tired, Rich,” Eddie started, “I haven’t been this tired since...” he thought for a second, brow pinched before it smoothed and a shit-eating grin spread across his face. “Since last time I finished fucking your mom.” 

He sighed after that as if content he’d gotten a comment like that in. He could settle now, maybe sleep some more. Eddie mostly wanted to be awake now, though. Sleeping made the world slip away, and he had been unconscious for a long time in the past day, so being coherent sounded nice.

Richie laughed. “Eds Gets Off a Good One!” Really, he shouldn’t have expected anything less. This was Eddie he was talking to. Eddie I-fucked-your-mom-were-almost-my-last-living-words Kaspbrak. 

Richie wanted to joke around. Really, he did. But it was hard to think of anything remotely entertaining to say when he had just gotten over thinking Eddie was dead. And before that, he had trekked through the sewers for God-only-knows-how-long while carrying the corpse of his best friend. And before that, he had dug through the remains of a house and got beat to all hell climbing down a well. And before that, he had the most vivid nightmare of Stan being buried alive and of Eddie breathing in the sewers somewhere. And before that, he had fought a demon clown. And before that, he had watched Eddie die in his arms. And before that, he had jammed a tomahawk into Henry Bowers’ skull. And before that, he had relived his homophobic childhood and was chased by a massive evil Paul Bunyan statue. And before that, he had been attacked by a fortune cookie. And before that, he had remembered his first love. And before that, he had flown seven hours from LA to Maine. And before that, he had performed a show thirty seconds after barfing on a roof. So yeah, all in all, it was a pretty shitty forty-eight hours. He wasn’t exactly in the mood to crack up a crowd. 

“So what’s heaven like? You’ve been there twice now. Actually, you probably don’t know. How was hell?” 

He tried.

Eddie scoffed. “Fuck off, Trashmouth,” he mustered, but he was smiling. 

The smile quickly fell though, and it rested into more of a worried smirk, more just his lips pursed tightly together. “It was... I don’t know what it was,” Eddie decided, closing his eyes to rest while he spoke. “I don’t think I remember it, but when I woke up in the sewers I just felt... heavy. Cold. Like someone had replaced my muscles with cement.” And then he made a face as he had a realization, and he scoffed again, eyes opening. “I guess that was the rigor mortis though, and all of the water around me. I don’t want to think about it.” Eddie grimaced. He didn’t like thinking about it at _all,_ actually. He brought a hand over to his arm and pinched himself lightly. “My skin also feels weird, clammy, like it’s not my own. No heaven though. Or hell. Or maybe it was hell, and being in hell means just not experiencing anything ever again. Or-“ He pointed his finger as he thought of something else. “Maybe God knew I would come back, and They wanted to save all of the good stuff for the real thing.” He nodded to himself. “Yeah. I like that one. That sounds nice.”

One thing Richie knew he would never understand about Eddie was his unwavering faith that there was some good watching over him. Maybe not God, but some being in the clouds had his best interest in mind. Richie personally couldn’t buy it. It had always just been one of those things he didn’t get, along with why Eddie still needed his water-filled aspirator (which Richie had in his pocket. He knew why, he just didn’t fully understand. And he never would. He had never been in that position.), or why the fuck Eddie would put chocolate chips in his pancakes and then _not_ proceed to eat it taco-style (fucking _heathen)._

“Maybe,” was all Richie said about that. Over the years, he’d learn when it was time to shut his trap. Granted, he rarely ever actually stopped talking, but sometimes he did. Like now. 

Eddie shrugged and decided not to waste energy on thinking about something that he’d surely have an existential crisis about later. “So... how... how’d you do it? How’d you kill It?” And a part of him was sort of sad it wasn’t the ‘could kill monsters if you believed it could even though it actually couldn’t kill monsters’ spear. A part of him wanted to be The Hero, not just the sob story that made everyone cry.

“Well... after you speared the fucker,” Richie loosely recalled. It was a fuzzy memory, but unlike he expected, as the minutes passed by, it became clearer and clearer. “We had to make It believe It was small. So uh...” How did he explain what happened? “We called It a little bitch boy until It turned into a wrinkly grapefruit-sized baby and then dissolved. And then- uh... then Mike pulled out Its beating heart and we crushed it. Kinda anticlimactic if you ask me.” Then Richie tried to die only to get dragged out, the cave collapsed, Eddie got crushed, and they ran out. Then they went to the Quarry. Everyone alive had their happy ending except for Richie. (And Eddie and Stan and Patty.)

But things were different now. Maybe all seven (eight, including Patty) of them would get something good.

“You’re telling me I was killed by a jackass with low self-esteem?” Eddie asked with a small smile, but a part of him felt like he was a wasted death if all it took were cruel words. He felt his grin fall slightly. “That’s... ironic.”

Irony was cruel, Richie knew that much. He didn’t like to think about it. Eddie sighed deeply, and it ended in a small cough and a disgruntled _‘ow’_ before he relaxed into the stiff bed.

“That’s disgusting though.” And Eddie was back to talking quickly in a relatively normal way. At least that was a good sign. “You pulled out Its heart? That’s like- that’s so disgusting even if It were a person. Did we ever find out what It actually was? Because I would throw up if I had to hold an organ, never mind one that came out of that _thing-_ “ He swallowed and shifted down a bit more, and Richie opened his mouth to say _I know you would have_ , but Eddie kept going. “You smell like shit, by the way. Even if you weren’t in the sewers to get me, you probably still would have smelled like shit- and for God's sake use conditioner, your hair looks like a greasy dog’s ass.” He smushed his hand against Richie's face again, shoving him away in a playful manner.

“Wow,” Richie remarked, leaning back in his wheelchair for a moment before the new stitches in his back demanded he lean forward again. “I come in here to make sure you’re okay and all you do is roast the shit outta me. I see how it is. Guess I’ll go fuck myself,” he deadpanned, resting his chin on his palm as Eddie’s hand shoved against him. 

Just then, the door creaked open. Richie gasped, immediately assuming the worst, but all that showed up in the crack of the door was Mike, smiling. 

“Michaelroni, what’s the dill?” 

Richie backtracked. Those two things weren’t related. They barely even made sense together as a bad joke. His eyebrows furrowed at his own words, but Mike was unfazed. 

“Hey Eddie, we were all um... can we come in? It’s cool if you two are having a moment though, we can come back later.”

“Nope.” Richie quickly shot down the idea of intimacy. “No moments in here.”

“Oh, well, everyone wants to see you, Eddie. Can we? No doctors though, not yet.”

Eddie was comforted by the idea of seeing the other Losers. It felt good to be able to breathe, and he was on so much morphine that even if it did hurt, he didn’t care. “Get in here, Losers,” he offered, a small and gentle smile on his face, but realistically it was more exhausted than anything else. (At Eddie’s words, Richie was immediately reminded of when he would swing by Eddie’s house and honk his horn obnoxiously, shouting, “get in Loser, we’re goin’ out!” ((When Richie saw Mean Girls for the first time he almost cried at the part and he hadn’t the slightest clue as to why.)) Of course, this was after Eddie rebelled against his mother and took every opportunity to show just exactly who he was choosing to spend his time with). “Come on, it feels like I haven’t seen any of you in thirty years.” 

And it really did. It felt like it had been so long like Eddie had lived a whole other lifetime in his own death. He swallowed down his emotion and wanted to curse at himself until he got ahold of them. He always had been the biggest baby of the bunch, and he hated it, but his breath was shaky as he saw the Losers all file into his room. He inhaled and his mouth shook too as he fought back the urge to cry, punching it down until it was buried deep inside of him. Ben was the first to talk as they all settled into different spots in the room. “Hey, man. How’re you feeling?”

Eddie let out a small laugh, saying, “not to be completely crude, but honestly? I feel like death. I’m exhausted.”

“Makes sense,” Bev chimed in. “You died twice.” The words seemed to come out of her mouth before she knew what she was saying because she winced like she had something she shouldn’t have. 

“I’m glad to have you back, Eddie, really,” Mike spoke like there was a ‘but’ about to follow. “But... I can’t help but wonder... how did this happen? _Why_ did this happen?” _But_ , Eddie's brain caught on, _we’re happy you’re alive,_ but. Mike turned to Richie. “And how did you know?” 

Richie paled and looked to Bev. Maybe she had seen it too. Maybe, but... she looked confused like she didn’t understand either. Like she hadn’t seen it.

As soon as Eddie could, he immediately grew defensive. “Listen, does it really matter how or why? I’m here and- and I don’t know why but-“ He tried to sit up but a grimace came across his face, and his hand settled over his stomach as he made a noise close to “ngk-“

“Eddie- you stupid-“ Bill came over and pressed a hand to the man's shoulder, drawing Eddies gaze up to the pseudo-leader. His eyebrows made him look scared; having the kicked-puppy look trademarked by Eddie Kaspbrak was both a blessing and a curse. “We’re completely thrilled to have you back, but we juh-just want to know _why_ , in case it’s... in case it’s something we should w-wuh-worry about. Nothing good has ever come out of the paranormal in Derry.” Bill pointedly raised his eyebrows. “Until _now_.” He looked around to the group, getting a few nods. “We just have to be safe about this.”

Ben spared a glance to Bev before looking back to the group. “We thought we killed It last time too. We need to be careful,” he added helpfully. 

Eddie glanced at Ben and back to Bill, then to Richie. He let his gaze linger for a second on the third and pretended it didn’t help him calm down, before nodding and leaning back.

Richie hated how tense the room was. He hated how there was probably something awful coming their way because they got Eddie back. Why couldn’t they have just something good happen to them without consequences? Why did everything need to have an equal, opposite reaction? They killed the fucking clown, couldn’t this be the reward? Why did it feel like this wasn’t quite over? 

Richie was scared. He was scared, and he knew it. He kept his eyes trained on Eddie until he relaxed a little. Then he moved on to Bev, who had been uncharacteristically quiet ever since Mike brought up the severity of the situation. She was staring at the floor, deep in thought, her eyes sharp, glasslike, as they examined a tile on the floor.

“Bev?” Richie questioned. “Is everything alright?” 

She shook her head and slowly looked up at him. “I had a dream last night.” _Ah shit,_ Richie groaned internally, _here we go again._ “It was a wonderful dream. The first good one I’ve had in twenty-seven years.” The air was thick. “You dreamed, didn’t you?”

“I wouldn’t call it a dream,” Richie said vaguely. “More like a… a tastefully _hellish_ nightmare.”

“The Deadlights,” Mike said in awe. “You saw the Deadlights. But It’s gone. Why are you still seeing things?”

“Maybe It’s not as gone as we think,” Bev whispered gravely. Richie turned to Eddie, eyes wide with horror. All of this came pointing back to him now. Anything that went wrong from now on was blood on Richie’s hands.

Eddie hadn’t noticed that his breathing had gotten a bit heavier until he panicked and his heart monitor beeped in warning. He looked to it, nearly jumping as he watched his heart rate bounce along at an alarmingly high speed. “Oh my God- oh my God-“ he breathed out. “No- I can’t- It’s gotta be over, right? You- you killed It! You fucking killed- Why- why can’t it just-“ A hand came to his chest and he couldn’t tear his eyes from the screen of the monitor. “Why is it doing that? Why won’t it stop- just-“ He patted his chest gently as if that would help. “Come on, you stupid- Why can’t I- I can’t breathe- my _inhaler-“_

“Eddie, you need to calm down-“ Bill interrupted Eddie by grabbing his wrist, pulling it away from his torso. Listen, you’re fine, just take a fuh-few breaths and calm down. Your body isn’t in a state to be freaking ouh-t like this, man.” 

“Is everything alright in here?” Dr. Bentel appeared in the door. “We got an alert from Mr. Kaspbrak’s monitor.”

Eddie looked at her with wide, deer-in-headlight doe eyes, then shook his head. “No-no I’m fine, just... excited.” And he offered a smile that, even to a stranger, could probably be called fake before he stiffly pulled from Bill’s grasp, and Bill let him.

Dr. Bentel looked around the room at its residents, then back to Eddie. “Just call if you need anything. The button is beside your bed.” Eddie nodded. “Anything at all, alright?” She raised her eyebrow as if saying _‘if these people are bugging you, we can make them leave_ ’. Eddie gave a firmer nod, and she was gone as quickly as she’d come.

”Eddie,” Richie called out to him like he was a mile away. “Eddie, look at me. Eds.” He instinctively put his hand on Eddie’s leg, a habit he didn’t quite remember having. He didn’t turn around when the door opened or when Eddie spoke to the doctor. He didn’t flinch when pulled out of Bill’s grip, and he didn’t back down when Dr. Bentel was slightly passive-aggressive towards everyone in the room except Eddie. When Eddie fell backward and massaged his head Richie pressed forward. If it were anyone else, if the situation were slightly different, then Richie would have pulled away. He would have cracked a shitty joke. But Richie was exhausted and didn’t have it within himself to put up a barrier of mildly offensive jokes. 

Eddie deflated into the mattress with a thick breath of air, he pinched his eyes closed and a hand came to rub at his temples. “I can’t do this again. I can’t.”

“Eds,” Richie rubbed Eddie’s thigh with his thumb ever so slightly. The movement could only be felt, not seen, but that was assuming Eddie could feel anything between all the drugs pumping through his system. “I can’t promise you anything, and I’m not gonna lie to you.” His voice was soft, soft and genuine like it seldom ever was. “But I do know one thing.” He shifted in his wheelchair, his hunched over position making his back throb, but it was the only way to close the distance between them. “You remember what I told you in the sewers the first time we went down there?” It was like they were the only two people in the room. “You’re braver than you think. You’ve proved yourself more than anyone else in this room, and I’ll stand by that.” He glanced down to his wheelchair. “When I can,” he added with a hint of a teasing grin.

Eddie didn’t move his hand, especially not with Richie's hand pressing reassuringly against his thigh like it was. He would have argued that anyone else had been through more if he hadn’t died twice in one day. “I...” And where was he even going with that? “I didn’t even want to go down there to begin with.” It was quiet, and when he moved his hand he was staring up at the ceiling. “I can be brave and scared at the same time, but I’d rather be neither.” Eddie let out, “Richie, you could have died and I just- I just stood there, man.”

He remembered Bill coming up to him, angry and spitting out his words as he had stayed frozen. It made him sick. “All I’m saying is that if It comes back, I can’t promise that I’m here to fight It. We were all here this time and we couldn’t do it, and I can’t-“ Eddie grimaced. “I can’t get stabbed in the face again. I can’t get thrown up on again. I can’t go back down into those _fucking_ sewers-“ His voice cracked coldly and sharply with emotion, with _fear_ perhaps. “I don’t have any more chances. There isn’t a third try for me. There wasn’t even supposed to be a second.”

“But when it mattered most, you were there,” Richie insisted. “You fought It off with your bare hands, Eds. You nearly strangled the fucker. And you made It into a monster kebab, saving my miserable ass in the process. I’m not saying that you’re gonna have to go back down there. I’m not saying that _any_ of us are gonna have to go back down there, but I _am_ saying that you _could_. You could do damn near anything, Eddie,” Richie said, and he meant it. 

Eddie stared at him, and his face sort of contorted in pain before he blinked and pressed a button that pumped a bit more painkiller into his system, and he looked away. Eddie liked to think that the pain was because of his fatal wound and not how his heart twisted looking at Richie. 

Richie frowned when Eddie felt he needed more painkillers. He still hurt. Maybe it would hurt less if Richie had only been a little faster. Less reckless on his way down. More in the right frame of mind. 

But he could beat himself up later. (Lord knew he would.)

Bill’s phone buzzed to life, and he startled a bit before digging through his pocket. He pulled his phone out and stared at the screen, inhaling sharply. Bill only watched the contact name ring for a second before he looked around the room and let out a tense breath. He looked back down and read out the name. “It’s Patty,” he said and glanced back up. All of the other Losers seemed to bite on their breath. 

“What?” Eddie breathed out, looking for an answer. Bill didn’t reply though, instead saying, “I’ll be right back.” He backed up and his thigh hit against a chair before he went out through the door, disappearing into the hallway.

To everyone, everything seemed so overwhelming, but Eddie especially. “Patty- like _Patty Uris_ , Patty?”

“Patty?” Richie has nearly forgotten about Stan in the mess that was Eddie’s heart stopping. He turned back to Eddie. The stab wound drew his attention, and on his face would it leave a nasty scar, Richie could tell that much. “Oh, uh... yeah. When I dreamed of you alive in the sewers... I also dreamed of Stan alive.” He grimaced. “In his grave.” Richie hadn’t known what Bill had told Patty, if he had even told her anything, but there was no way she actually agreed to dig up Stan. _Oh God,_ Richie’s conscious hissed in one ear, _what if Stan has suffocated down there? What if he scraped at the inside of the coffin until his nails bled and he couldn’t see through his own tears?_ It would all be Richie’s fault. _It would be all your fault._

Eddie blinked owlishly. Stan was alive in his grave. He couldn’t have had much air in there, maybe an hour and a half, two hours at most if he kept his breathing level. He had been scared in the sewers, but at least he hadn’t been completely closed in. 

Eddie closed his eyes and leaned back against the bed with an exhale of air. “This is all so fucked up,” he breathed out quietly, “and nobody will ever even believe us.” 

Nobody had to though. Somehow the missing persons rate would drop in Derry, the ‘dead bodies found’ rate would drop, it would become safer almost miraculously, and nobody but the Losers’ Club would know why or how. 

Eddie felt his eyelids grow heavy when he opened them, and his breathing calmed, not of his free will. It was like being in a bowl of Jell-o, and he relished in it. 

“Eddie?” Mike asked quietly, and he earned a sluggish raise of eyebrows. “Those work fast, huh?” His voice was like whiskey by a fire. Low and cool, warm and honestly just a little sexy. (Richie thought it was _very_ sexy, but he kept that thought to himself.)

Eddie made a pleasant face and nodded. “Like a charm,” he offered.

Richie tensed up at how loopy Eddie was. It was too familiar. It was too much like when Eddie was fighting to stay awake while Richie dragged him through the sewers because his life depended on it. It was too much like when Eddie bled out in front of him after being impaled. It was too much like-

Richie’s train of thought was abruptly cut off when Bill came bursting back in the room, eyes glassy and rimmed red.

Bill almost fell from how aggressively he came into the room, the door hitting the wall and quite possibly denting it in the process. “He’s- he-he’s alive-“ he confirmed, voice wet with emotion. “She- oh my God I can’t believe she a-a-actually luh-listened to me- Suh-Stan’s alive. He was- he- he was pale and missing a lot of buh-buh-buh-blood but-” Bill leaned against the wall and lifted his hand almost triumphantly. “He’ll be okay.” A choked laugh, one laden with tears, came from his chest. He’d never been a pretty crier and now was no different as his hand dragged down his face and he grinned.

Stan was _alive_. 

“Holy shit, she fucking _listened_ to you?” Richie asked in disbelief, properly taking his eyes off Eddie for the first time since he was allowed in the room. Stan deserved his full attention. 

“Stan’s _alive_?” Beverly’s voice cracked. Something came to life in her eyes.

Ben was slack-jawed. “We... we gotta go see him!” That much was obvious. “It’s been twenty-seven years, guys!” Ben turned to Bill, and Richie saw how thrilled he was. He saw how stoked Bev was too. Mike and Bill. All of them had moved their attention from Eddie onto Stan. Just like that.

Now don’t get him wrong, Stan was Richie’s best friend next to Eddie. He always had a dry retort to Richie’s shitty jokes and was the one and only person Richie had ever turned to for advice. He loved Stan with his entire being and wanted almost more than anything to drop everything in Derry to go see him down in Atlanta. 

But Eddie was in Maine, and he was clinging onto what shred of life he still had left. 

“He’s still in Atlanta, right?” Bev asked. “When can we leave?”

“Probably before this week is over!” All of Mike’s thoughts about the Deadlights and It has seemingly gone out the door. It made sense though. Stan being alive was the best news Mike had gotten in a long, _long_ time. 

“I’m juh-just glad he-he’s okay,” Bill said, sounding like he might properly cry. 

“Guys!” Richie spoke up for Eddie, who was currently too high on whatever painkiller he gave himself to talk. Everyone fell silent. “Eddie isn’t going anywhere. Not for a long while anyway. And I’m not really quite in shape to fly either.”

Eddie pointed lightly to Richie. “True. I am _thoroughly_ fucked. I don’t think they’d even _let_ me on a plane,” he slurred. “But shit, I don’t think _I’d_ let me on a plane either.”

His eyes were closed and his actions sort of lagged behind him as he spoke, but he was still awake. “But woohoo,” he said and his fist went up a bit, triumphant. “We’re all alive, fuck yoooou, Pennywise! What a skanky fuckin’ whore.“ They were all already smiling, but at Eddie's drugged demeanor, everyone let out small laughs. 

“So you guys go. You four.“ Eddie pointed to Mike, Ben, Bill, and Bev, eyes open now. “And Richie,” he said, his attention turned to the mentioned body. “Oh love of my life, good ol’ Rich Tozier will just sit right here and make sure I don’t die again.“ Eddie gave Richie another pat on the cheek, but this time his hand lingered on Richie’s shoulder afterward. “Isn’t that right, Trashmouth? You- you’ll stay here. You always beat up everyone that made fun of me- or, at least you tried to with your fuckin’ skinny-ass fuckin’ limp-ass wet noodle arms.” Then Eddie added, almost as an afterthought, “You did kill Bowers after he stabbed me in the face, though. So you stay.” He turned to Mike. “Richie stays. You four go. Tell Stan that I am going to kiss him when I see him and that I miss him very much.” 

Richie hadn’t ever had a heart attack, but this sure as hell felt like one. He knew it didn’t mean anything, that Eddie was just pumped up on meds, but it felt like the world. 

_Love of my life._

Eddie finished his drugged monologue with a thumbs up to the rest of the group. “And I will kiss all of you when you get back too. Don’t even fuckin’ worry about it.”

Everyone else could tell that Richie had heard those four words, and they could tell what they meant. Richie was not subtle, he knew that. The first person to figure it out was Ben. Ben, the romantic of the group, the one who pined for a girl for twenty-seven years, the most real and down-to-earth guy Richie had ever met. Of course, he was the first one to piece the puzzle together. He asked Richie when he was just fourteen. Richie didn’t even know what the word “queer” really meant when he was fourteen. And Ben was already asking if he was queer and if he liked Eddie. Richie had said he didn’t know what that was but he certainly did like Eddie because he was his best friend so why wouldn’t he? And before Ben could tell him what queer meant, Eddie walked up with ice cream (but only one for Richie, not Ben. He said he didn’t know Ben was going to be there. Later that same afternoon, all the Losers went for a scoop. Eddie’s mom yelled at him for having too much sugar in one day). Out of all of them, maybe Ben knew what it was like. Maybe he knew a fraction of what Richie felt and how the world wanted him to eat his feelings and spit them out and leave them on the sidewalk to burn in the sun. But you don’t have people calling you a queer fairy when you’re a guy who likes a girl. You’re a sinner and “tainting my boy” if you’re a boy who likes a boy. You have to keep your feelings down and your chin up and your back straight if you're a boy who likes a boy. _Tell jokes, Richie. Build walls, Richie. Don’t let anyone close to you, Richie. You’re such a fucking_ faggot _, Richie._

_Love of my life,_ Richie.

Now Richie was well past fourteen. He was forty. He knew what queer meant. He knew he liked Eddie. He knew he maybe, possibly (completely, without a shadow of a doubt) liked Eddie as something maybe, possible (completely, without a shadow of a doubt) more than a friend. He knew that he wanted to kiss Eddie, to hold him, to love him, to care for him, to be cared for by him, to love him, to love and love him and love him. 

After chatting about what was going down, Bev, Ben, Bill, and Mike all left the room. Richie was alone with Eddie. He wanted to lean over and kiss him. He wanted so badly to. But he pushed it down. 

Deep, _deep_ down.

He had kept the skeletons in the closet next to him for this long.


	3. Epiphany of Vice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We missed the March update, so here it is now. The April one will be up tomorrow so you guys don't have to wait long. 
> 
> Happy Quarantine everybody :)

_Eddie Kaspbrak Wants a Divorce_

_Don’t touch the other boys, Richie. They’ll know your secret, Richie. Your dirty little secret!_

“Don’t you wanna kiss me too, Eds?” Richie puckered his lips obnoxiously. He knew he was pushing boundaries, but that was how he’d gotten through school. It was how he had made it this far without dying of heartache. “I’m your knight in shining armor, after all.”

Eddie’s head came back a bit as he smiled, eyes squinting before it broke into a laugh. He scrunched up his nose. “Here.” He kissed the palm of his hand for emphasis and then smacked Richie lightly on the side of the face. “There you go, champ. Gonna have to try harder than that if you want the real deal, Rich.”

Eddie, of course, that deep, dark part of Eddie that was still self aware, wanted to strangle the Eddie that wasn’t. He wouldn’t remember this well when he wasn’t doped up on morphine, but if he ever found out, he’d be red to his toes. He was straight after all.

Except he was forty and didn’t have any kids. Except he was forty and only had ever slept with his wife once every two weeks on a good month, more to keep her happy than anything else. Except he was forty, and the fastest his heart had ever gone was sitting in a hammock with Richard Tozier when he was thirteen.

But yes. Definitely straight. Definitely, definitely, _definitely_ straight. 

“Nice try, though.” 

Even though it wasn’t a real kiss, even though Richie had kissed Eddie’s cheek a million times when they were kids, a million times in the Quarry, on bikes, outside the ice cream parlor, in Bill’s room, and Ben’s basement, and Mike’s farm, and everywhere, anytime he could, despite all that, Richie still burned bright red. The tips of his ears were on fire and he felt like a million bucks. But he couldn’t say how that didn’t count and then just lean over and kiss Eddie for real. He couldn’t do that. Guys like Richie didn’t get to kiss the guy they wanted to kiss. They got to kiss girls who they would never love quite the same and pretend to be happy like Audra and Bill, like Ben and Bev, like Patty and Stan, like Eddie and-... Well, maybe not like Eddie and Myra. 

“‘There you go, _champ’_? What are you, my dad?” 

Richie’s dad actually had called him “champ” on a semi-regular basis. That and “sport” and “kiddo”. Wentworth Tozier was a difficult man to talk to, but he was there when it counted. He and Maggie weren’t the best parents in the world, but they tried. Things were kinda nasty there for a while, but they eventually got their shit together. Went to some couples’ therapy sessions, figured out that communication is pretty important, went to some family therapy (Richie never told any of the Losers about that. Except Eddie of course. Eddie was always the exception.) and just made things work. It was a struggle sometimes, but it worked out. Look at Richie now. 

Successful, 

wealthy, 

famous. 

Sad and alone and pining for someone he had stayed in love with for twenty-seven years, despite completely forgetting about him.

So maybe Went and Maggie hadn’t done the best. It wasn’t their fault Richie was queer and never told them that. It wasn’t their fault Richie couldn’t get over someone—

( _love of my life, Richie_ ) 

—despite all that happened between the years of forget. It wasn’t their fault Richie had been forced to keep everything inside and never let people see behind his shitty facade that always seemed to fool people, even Eddie—

( _love of my_ life _, Richie)._

—Eddie, who was always the exception. Even he couldn’t see through it. After all, Richie had been perfecting it for nearly thirty years since Eddie had last seen it. Since Richie had last seen—

( _Love of my life, Eddie Kaspbrak.)_

_—Eddie._

“Awe,” Richie said, putting on his Billionaire at a Press Conference Who is Also a Pedophile But Trying Not to Let People Know Voice (the name was a work in progress). 

Voices were the perfect form of avoiding a topic at hand, Richie found. And now it worked even better because he could actually _do_ Voices. “Ya wan’ meh ta give ya a big ol’ smooch there, Eddio-Spaghettio?” He dropped the Voice and pinched Eddie’s cheek (the good one that had _not_ been stabbed) and said much too loudly, “cute, cute, cute!”

Eddie pulled his head back more just to get away, shaking his head to get Richie to stop. He was grinning though. “Awgh, man! You know I hate it when you do that, Rich. You know what? Maybe I was gonna say yes. Now you can go fuck yourself.” Stop it. Shut _up._

A voice, too close to one Victor Criss, the blond two grades up who had died back in ‘86, hissed at the raven to _stop being fucking queer_ in his ear _,_ and another, deeper voice added _, bet this is the flamer that Henry was talkin' about,_ and Eddie recognized it somewhere in his memories as Huggins, a boy too big to be anything but stupid.

Eddie didn’t know the last voice that hissed in his ear, what voice told him _don’t kiss Richie’s cheek back, don’t call him cute too_ , because if he did, if he returned the affection, then maybe everything would feel less like a joke.

That sobered him a bit, and he sort of finished his laugh awkwardly, looking somewhere else. He hated how he was talking, how he couldn’t really stop the mashed potatoes spewing from his mouth. He felt like his mouth had cotton in it, and the cotton was stopping the signals to _shut the fuck up_ that were coming from his brain. 

There was a small silence, and Eddie went to say something, then didn’t. He did this a few times, fingers digging into the hospital blankets while he searched for some kind of clarity, deciding what to say. “Richie, I-...“ He paused, breath cutting out as he tried desperately to think of words. “I don’t know how to talk to you.” He looked back up. “You make me laugh, and somehow also make me feel like a jackass.”

“That’s ‘cause you are one, Spaghetti Man.”

Eddie chose to ignore that. 

“I guess I don’t know how to talk to you when we aren’t in a life threatening situation anymore. Like somewhere along the lines we… well, grew up, I guess.” 

The struggle to focus on his words made his body distracted as his hand wandered, grabbing onto Richie’s hospital gown without really tugging it or anything. He smoothed it out, then fiddled with Richie’s collar as he spoke. 

“You just make everything feel so... real? I don’t know if that’s right. I feel really floaty right now. I don’t know if I’m making sense or not. I think I’m trying to say I miss you. Y’know, _you._ I missed you for twenty-seven years, and I didn’t even know it. God, that’s fucking cheesy, but I did. Shit, dude, I _missed_ you.” He glanced up and met Richie’s eyes, then moved back down, swallowing. “More than I probably should have, Rich. More than I should have _let_ myself. Other than the whole killer clown thing, I'm happy to see that you’re doing good. You look good. I don’t think I said that before, but I should have, man. What the fuck happened to you? You’re… shiny, now.” He smiled, like that made any sense. “Shiny and popular, like Greta Bowie.” Eddie grabbed one of Richie’s stray hairs between his finger tips; it was greasy, but he didn’t mind.

“Sure hope not; she was a bitch.”

“She wasn’t a bitch, she was pretty. _Shiny._ ”

Richie snorted. “So, what, then? I’m pretty too? You flatter me.”

Eddie inhaled deeply, too tired and too sore to get angry for the miscommunication. “I’m talking a lot, and my face hurts, so I think I’m going to stop now.”

Richie didn’t comment on how Eddie didn’t say _no, Richie, you're not pretty,_ and instead focused on the drop in his stomach at the silence _._

Richie’s face screwed up like he just ate a particularly sour lemon Warhead. He went to make a comment, but he was very suddenly hyper-aware of where Eddie’s hands were. 

_He missed me_ , Richie thought. _He missed me, more than he should have. And he thinks I look good. And he’s playing with my hair. My_ greasy _hair. And he missed me._

Out of context, it might have seemed like maybe Eddie was a little bit in love with Richie too, but Richie had the context. He had, arguably, too _much_ context. He knew this was just Eddie hopped up on painkillers. He knew Eddie was affectionate with everyone. Well, when he wasn’t angry, which, albeit, was a rarity in itself. He knew that if it were any of the other Losers sitting here, Eddie would be acting the same. Richie had to constantly remind himself that if he was going to look into what Eddie said, he had to look at the whole picture. The whole picture had a lifetime in between them and wives and no boys who you got to kiss. 

“You look pretty good yourself, Spagheds. Especially, y’know, for dying. Twice, I might add.” 

Richie knew he had a problem. He couldn’t take things seriously. He had been taught for so long to repress everything. Being a sad, lonely man who hadn’t done much except cry a lot when he was by himself and never talked about his feelings was his only _honest_ claim to fame. Everything else was a hoax. This, however, was clearly lining up to be a serious, adult conversation, and Richie didn’t know how to act. He didn’t know what to say, because he only knew how to quip and make jokes that fell flat. He was a funny guy, but clearly not funny enough ‘cause they didn’t even trust him to write his own material. If he couldn’t do that, then what was he left with? 

“I dunno what to do now, Eds,” Richie admitted, his own voice flat and tired, lacking any normalcy of a jovial tone. “I... I dunno.” 

And that was as close to a confession of how lost he was that Eddie would ever get. He looked Eddie in his foggy eyes that had a grey ring around the iris ( _foggy with death_ , his brain supplied, and he told it promptly to _shut the fuck up_ ) and a stupid smile forced his way onto his face. He couldn’t help it. He was only, like, a foot away from Eddie, and he was just so... _so..._

Richie didn’t even know what he was. But he did know that he really, really wanted to lean over and kiss Eddie, even if he hurt his back and popped his stitches, even though Eddie looked like he was Patient Zero in the next zombie apocalypse. He wanted desperately to kiss him, but not if Eddie pushed him away, which Richie knew was inevitable. Eddie had never hinted at being queer; he even occasionally (read: very frequently. It was borderline overcompensating.) reinforced the idea that he was straight. Richie had done nothing but the opposite. 

“I’ve never been too good at this whole ‘adulting’ thing. But you knew that.” 

Richie hesitantly lifted his hand and traced his thumb under the line that was Eddie’s stab wound to the face, and Eddie’s lips pulled into a grimace as his nose scrunched. He had clean gauze and stitches in place of the medical tape Bev had used initially. It looked clean, and Eddie seemed placated by it as he realized that Richie’s finger against his skin didn’t really hurt now that it was properly tended to. 

“You’re gonna have a couple a’ sick battle scars, Eds. You get to say you were stabbed in the face and still won the fight.”

Eddie hummed and pressed his cheek into Richie’s hand now that he recognized it wasn’t so painful. It was tender, but nothing more, and the contact felt nice. “I stabbed him back,” he offered. “I don’t know if you got told that. I pulled the knife out of my face and stabbed him.” 

Richie smiled a smile far too warm for what he was being told.

“Then I told him to get a fucking haircut,” Eddie reminisced with a small smile, but it fell with a sigh. 

He had told them all dramatically as they went through the sewers what had happened with childlike wonder. His hands had been flailing, and he’d almost tripped when he reenacted a stabbing motion. Richie felt that maybe it had all been a dramatization, but they were marching towards death, and it had been a good morale booster. He hadn’t even seen the stab wound until he had already put a tomahawk through Bowers’ skull. That had been particularly traumatic. Richie even hurled everywhere right after Bowers collapsed. It was funny. Trauma made for the best comedy. After all the shit they’d been through, Richie was the only one who was _technically_ a murderer. Killing an evil space clown didn’t exactly count, but killing a person, no matter how deranged, very much _did_ count. 

“I think it hurt more than… “ Eddie gestured vaguely to his stomach. “All this. This all just sort of felt numb and warm. This, though?” A gesture to his cheek. “This felt like fire. Like lightning. And it fucking sucked.”

“Well I don’t imagine it would feel _good,”_ Richie countered. “I mean, unless you’re _really_ into some wild BDSM shit.” A beat passed and he mulled something over before his eyes went comically wide and he asked, pulling his hand back just a bit, “wait, _are_ you one of those guys? No judgement here, though. Whips and chains excitement me and all, but I’m not trying to blow my back out _again_ . Last time did _not_ go well, and that was like, four years ago or some shit.”

Eddie pointedly ignored him, offering no more than a roll of his eyes, and instead cupped Richie’s hand against his face, closing his eyes and sighing contently. It felt nice, reassuring almost. Richie’s crude mouth was familiar in a way Eddie hadn’t known in decades. He cracked a smile at that because who other than Richie Tozier could make whips and chains a soothing topic of conversation?

Richie kinda felt like he might explode if Eddie kept his hand over his own, but that didn’t sound like a half-bad way to go, so he stayed put. 

“I’m not looking forward to the scars,” Eddie said finally, the warm sense of familiarity fading as he thought of the future. “I think I’ll be happy to forget them when I...” When he what? When he went home? When was he even going to get out? Was he going back home at all? What even _was_ his home? He died and came back, _twice_. There was no protocol for men dying from space clowns stabbing him in the back. And how was he supposed to keep going forward without the other people who had been through what he’d been through? Relatively speaking, anyway. How was he supposed to get reunited with the Losers after thirty years only to leave them days later? 

“Well, I suppose I need to figure out what I’m doing before I decide anything.”

“You think you’re gonna forget?” Richie’s tone held a hint of worry. “I dunno about that, Eds. We aren’t in Derry anymore. We’re in Bangor, and I can still recall every instance in _vivid_ detail.” He leaned back in his wheelchair, only to wince at his stitches hitting the leather backing and sit up again. “And what do you mean ‘figure out what you’re doing’? Are you not just gonna... go home? To the Big Apple? City of eight million people? Where you’ve put down your whole life? I just kinda figured we’d all swap numbers and go our separate ways, with the exception of Ben and Bev who are five seconds away from boning.” Eddie stayed quiet, and his brow furrowed in discontent, his eyes opening just barely. “Maybe we’d all meet up for brunch every few months or something like the forty-year-olds we are, but... that’s all. Maybe visit each other on birthdays. I don’t think we’re gonna forget though. Not this time.” Richie gnawed on his lip. “But… what do you think? Do you not wanna go home or something? Is the misses not getting it up good enough anymore?”

Richie had hit a sore spot on his last comments. Eddie didn’t like the word abuse; it made his stomach churn, his blood go cold, made him feel like he was overreacting. His mother hadn’t been kind to him, or perhaps she was too kind in a twisted way. His therapist had said he had a sort of Stockholm Syndrome, and that’s why he had married someone so similar. His wife controlled everything. She controlled their bank account; she controlled what he wore in the morning; she controlled what they ate and when; she controlled travelling; she controlled _him_. The only reason he had come to Derry was because he left without taking no for an answer.

_(Eddy, you’re scaring me!)_

He could hear her shrill voice that day as he frantically packed shoes, shoes from the back of his closet that were hardly worn at all, but when you worked for a big insurance company, hardly worn was still too worn. He needed shiny shoes, and these had scuffs. A real shame, too. They were comfortable and expensive, as most Gucci loafers were. 

_(Eddy, please! Talk to me, Eddy!_ ) 

He packed the shoes anyway. He was just going to Derry; they would do just fine. 

_(Eddy-Bear!)_

It terrified him.

“Beep beep, Richie.” He said quietly, face falling, telling the man that he had pushed the boundaries a bit. Eddie knew, and maybe it was the whole near-death-experience, that it was time. It was time to grow up again, and like the last time he faced the clown, he faced his own demon; he would have to do it again. He’d stood up to his mother and then the clown before, and he had turned out no worse for the wear. It was _time._

“I think I’m getting a divorce,” he said quietly, scrunching up his nose. It surprised even himself how easily the words came out. And how honest they were. “Wow. I... I didn’t know that. But yeah. _Yeah_ , I’m getting a divorce.” 

Eddie held Richie’s hand over his chest. It was nice.

Richie’s eyes nearly popped out of his skull when Eddie said the big D word. Not Dick, but Divorce. A million thoughts ran through his head. _Why? When did he decide this? Had he even talked about it with his wife? Was his wife on board? Did it even matter if she was on board in the eyes of the law? Why did Richie know nothing about divorces? Why was Eddie getting a divorce? Why did it sound like this was the first time he had ever said it out loud?_ Was _it the first time he had ever said that out loud? What the hell was going on between him and Myra that he didn’t want to talk about?_

But Richie didn’t say any of that. Instead, he opted to go with, “wow, Spagheds, only you could be getting a divorce and not know about it.” 

His words and tone were a friendly teasing, but his expression was another story. It was almost... tender. Warm. Familiar, even. 

“What happened?” 

Richie genuinely didn’t know. A few days ago at Jade of the Orient, Eddie had seemed positive that he was married. He smiled when he talked about his wife, even if the smile didn’t reach his eyes. Richie blamed it on exhaustion of driving from Manhattan to Derry in a day. That was the only explanation. Eddie wouldn’t have married someone he didn’t love. He had talked when they were younger about living with the love of his life and-

_Oh._

Richie, the love of my life.

_The love of my life, Richie_.

What a terrible, horrible coincidence.

Eddie sighed so heavily that he winced, having forgotten about the surgery. Richie could feel his ribs shake through his skin where Eddie's hand held his own. It wasn’t reassuring in the slightest. 

Eddie shook his head. “I don’t know how to explain it. When I try and make a list of things she’s done I... I can’t. She treats me like- She’s just- It’s-“ He groaned in annoyance and tried to relax into the bed with tense shoulders.

“She’s like my mom, but twice as bad. To anyone else it seems fine, and like I’m being taken care of, and everything she does is done just so that it can’t be called out without making me seem like I’m overreacting.” He explained, “when I got Mike’s call, I had just been talking to her on the phone, and she was upset with me. She wouldn’t let me hang up, so I told her I shouldn’t be on the phone while I was driving, that I’d get into an accident, and she still didn’t hang up.” Eddie grimaced. “Neither did I, though.” He took a breath. It trembled when he let it go. “That seems so small but, it’s like that with everything-“ His voice picked up in speed, like he couldn’t get the words out fast enough. “If she doesn’t have control- or if she doesn’t know what’s going on for just one _second-_ “ Eddies voice cracked, and he realized he had been gripping Richie’s hand tightly. He let go, his grip leaving behind faint marks on Richie’s skin, and he shook his head. Richie hadn’t even been aware he was squeezing that hard. “I just... need to be an adult. I don’t think I’ve ever taken care of myself. So I’m getting a divorce. I don’t know if I can even- My whole view of a healthy relationship is completely screwed, Rich. It took me nearly dying to realize that I haven’t even lived. I’m a fucking risk analyst. God _damn.”_

Richie chose not to point out that Eddie hadn’t _nearly died_ but rather _died twice and was somehow still alive_. 

Eddie looked over to him, a pathetic smile on his face. “So nothing happened. To answer your question. And that’s the problem. Absolutely _nothing_ changed.”

Richie knew there had been something familiar about the way Eddie talked about Myra. It was the same way he used to talk about his mother. His abusive, overbearing, vile mother. 

“Holy shit,” was what Richie went with. But how else did someone reply to that? Eddie had essentially said that his mother had fucked him up so badly he felt it was necessary to be with a woman who was basically her incarnate.

From the way he said it, it sounded like Eddie hated his job. Like, _really_ fucking hated it. In his defense, it _did_ sound painfully boring. And he wouldn’t want to go back home. And none of the Losers could offer him a place to stay while he got his shit sorted out because they were all too far away, because Eddie would have to be in the city while the paperwork was handled. Ben and Bev were going to the west coast for a much needed vacation. Mike was heading down to Florida. Bill was going back to England. (Or was he still going to be in LA for his movie? Richie hadn’t really been paying attention when he told them at the Quarry. He had other things on his mind.) And Stan was in Atlanta. And Richie was on the other side of the fucking country. 

Although, Richie really didn’t live in one place. He was constantly on tour for something or flying somewhere for an interview for a late night TV show. There were plenty of things that required his attention in New York. Plenty of theaters and talk show hosts. It wouldn’t be hard to temporarily stay in the city. He could do it. It wasn’t like he was lacking funds. 

He didn’t tell Eddie that, though. It would be weird. Besides, Eddie probably wanted time alone to get his head straight again.

“So… what are you gonna do now, Eds?” 

“I don’t know,” Eddie offered, shrugging. “Pump more morphine into myself, I think. It wears off too quickly, and I could really use a nap.” He knew panicking and getting worked up wouldn’t solve anything, and the painkillers in his system sort of stopped him from even doing that. He was more relaxed than he had been in… _shit,_ he didn’t even know how long. “Then I guess I call Myra. I tell her what I told you, and I send her the papers. Hire a lawyer for sure; she’ll try and take everything. She doesn’t even work full time, but she’ll take every cent knowing her. ‘Oh we don’t need separate accounts, Eddy-Bear! You just let me take care of it,’” he mocked, then rolled his eyes. “I really am spineless. That’s how everything went, and now I have no idea how to even... how I’m supposed to get half of _anything_.” He huffed, stress lining his brow.

Richie tried to think of something to say to comfort Eddie. _You’re not spineless_ , his brain tried, but there was nothing more, just a desperate knowing that _you are not spineless, Eddie Kaspbrak._

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Eddie said bluntly. “I have a headache.” 

“Well then what _do_ you wanna talk about?”

“What are you going to do, Rich?” Eddie asked after a beat, aiming a spotlight at Richie. “What’s Tozier’s big plan now? Go home? Get drunk? Try and forget? Or do you want to remember this time?”

  
  


_Richie Tozier Outs Himself_

_1_

Richie was not a fan of this whole flip-the-conversation-on-the-Trashmouth thing. No thank you. Hard pass from him. Talking about his issues and plans for the future was probably one of his least favorite things in the world, which was ironic considering he talked about himself for a living. 

But Richie couldn’t say no to Eddie. Not when they were kids, and certainly not now. 

“Maybe a little of all of the above,” Richie said. “I guess I’ll go home.” He was completely willing to stay for Eddie. He could make it work. “Back to LA.” Where a large empty house was waiting for him. “I’ll definitely swing by a bar or two or three.” Actually, he probably wouldn’t. He’d go to whatever liquor store he could find fastest, buy half of their stock and drink at home. A bar was too loud. He couldn’t handle that right now. 

“But I think I’d like to remember this time,” he admitted, and it was true. He wanted to be able to call any of the Losers up when he was feeling low or just wanted someone to talk to. Maybe if he was touring through their city they could grab drinks. Hang out. Catch up. “Don’t you? ‘Cause like... we’re all still alive. We all made it out. Yeah, we’re all real fucked in the head; you died, Stan was buried alive, I got sucked up in the Deadlights, but we’re still breathing, aren’t we?” Genuine optimism was a new color on him. “That’s gotta be worth something, Eds.”

Eddie stayed quiet for a second, looking off into the shallow white walls while he thought. There was a moment while he pursed his lips, and his brow was worried. He shook his head and looked to Richie. “I don’t know what I want to remember. I don’t know what I want at all.” 

That wasn’t true, and Eddie knew it. He clenched his fist, then unclenched it. “I...” His heart monitor sped up as he looked at his fingers, tapping his thumb to each of them to provide stimulus. His voice was hushed as he said, “I would really like to hold your hand again, actually.” It was like his fumbling fingers were the most interesting thing in the room with how intently he was looking at them. “If that’s okay. I’m sorry- I’m sorry that’s-“ 

And his next words meant more to Richie than he knew. 

“That’s pretty fucking queer, isn’t it?” 

Richie had never gone so pale so fast in his life.

And there was Eddie’s small, self-deprecating laugh that ended with him clearing his throat awkwardly. “You-... you don’t have to. Shit, I’m sorry. I don’t want to make you feel weird or anything. I’m just-“ 

_Alone. I’m Scared. I’m Confused. I’m in more pain than I’ve ever been in._

Air punched from his lungs.

“Tired.” 

If Richie had been hooked up to a heart monitor, then his would have gone from normal to fucking insane in about two seconds flat. 

“Yeah! Yeah, yeah, no, that’s cool. It’s cool, it’s good,” Richie said way too enthusiastically. He wasn’t sure if Eddie had ever initiated anything like this; it was always Richie who called him pet names and pinched his cheeks and kissed his face. Eddie was never the one starting it. He took Eddie’s hand in between his own two and squeezed it gently. Maybe Eddie had never initiated it because it had all been joking, but this? This was _real_. 

“It’s okay, Eds,” he reassured. “I’ve always been a little bit queer myself.” Richie stared at their interlocked hands before hearing what he had just confessed to. 

_I’ve always been a little bit queer myself_.

He dropped Eddie’s hand and jerked back so aggressively that his wheelchair began to roll backward. 

“I-... I-... that’s-... that’s not what I meant.” Richie quickly began trying to dig himself out of the crater he had just created, but was only going down deeper. “I mean like queer like weird, y’know? Not as in like _gay_ , ‘cause I’m not gay. Not that I have anything against gay people! I’m not like homophobic or anything, y’know? You can’t be homophobic if you’ve had a boyfriend, y’know? And it’s not like I wanna suck dick or anything, especially not _your_ dick, because _that’s_ gay. Which I’m not. I like girls and tits and- not guys and- and- “

Richie clamped his mouth shut. He had let the B-word slip out. _Boyfriend_. There was no hiding it now. 

“I’m _sorry_ , Eds, I’m ruh-really, _really_ sorry.” Richie backed away from Eddie’s bed. “I-I can leave. I’ll leave you alone ‘cause you don’t wanna hang with a fairy or anything.” He laughed bitterly, fingers tapping anxiously against his chair. “Can’t be seen with someone like me, but I get it ‘cause I don’t wanna be seen with me either, but not all of us get the luxury of running away from what we hate.”

  
  


_2_

Eddie had sort of been suspicious. Not that he knew, and even when Richie was freaking out, he didn’t know, but a part of him might’ve, sort of, just had this _feeling_ . He sighed as the man—the _queer_ , his brain hummed unhelpfully—pulled away to leave. 

“Oh, shut _up_ , Richie.”

“I don’t fucking care if you’re a pansy or not, you asshole.” He was more annoyed than anything. “Please just...” His face contorted, and he didn’t know why his eyes stung or why his heart hurt, but his hand came up to cover his eyes. God, he really was just plain old fucking _tired_. 

“Richard. You are the single dumbest fuck that I have ever met.” He let out quietly, hand dragging down his face before it landed on his chest. “Dude, I don’t care if you’re gay or not. Honestly? I wouldn’t be surprised—you overcompensate _a lot_ —but right now, I would really like it-“ His voice wavered and he took a second to bite down emotion. He couldn’t be alone right now. He could not be alone with his thoughts or else they’d kill him. He cleared his throat, and his voice came out an octave lower as he forced it steady, slow. “I would really like it, if you would come back over here and hold—“ he opened his hand expectantly, “—my hand.” 

His lips pressed together in a clear display of trying not to cry, and he offered his hand more insistently, his voice thick and exhausted, “Please, Richie, I need-“ inhale, “I need you to just...” His shoulders made a movement that came from his pent up stress. “Just please, come and- and hold my hand.” His fingers flexed out, demanding Richie’s hand in his own.

It all felt so unreal.

“Okay,” Richie said, his voice unsteady but willing. “Okay, yeah.” He rolled forward until his knees bumped into Eddie’s bed. “Yeah.” He sniffed and took Eddie’s hand in his own trembling one. “Okay.” 

That had not been the reaction Richie was anticipating. He thought maybe Eddie would be disgusted and toss Richie out. Lose his number and forget him again. Maybe yell. Maybe call him names. He did say pansy but that was nothing compared to how creative Bowers would get. Richie was sometimes a cock-sucking fairy. Sometimes a sick fucking queer. And other times just a faggot. Richie was almost positive that fifteen year old Henry Bowers didn’t know the weight behind that word. 

Eddie had called him a pansy. Maybe he was upset. Maybe he was a little homophobic but didn’t want to lose a friend. Maybe he just didn’t want to be alone. Maybe he’d break off what they had later. 

It felt awful knowing that, but knowing that Eddie knew he was queer was almost like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. Now Eddie knew. That was it. Maybe, just maybe, if Richie told him the other half of his secret, the dirtier side of it, maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as he was anticipating either. Maybe Eddie would laugh it off and tell Richie to move on but that they could still stay friends. 

Richie met Eddie’s eyes. “Eds, um-... I actually, uh...”

Or maybe he’d shun Richie for ever thinking that way about his best friend. 

He broke contact and stared at his feet. 

“Never mind.”

Eddie furrowed his brow, his heart hurt seeing Richie look so nervous. “I’m sorry,” he said gently, squeezing the man's hand. “Maybe I shouldn’t have phrased it that way. Rich, I don’t care. But in a good way. You’re still just Richie.”

He was still just _Richie_. Still just the kid with glasses who got his fair share of soap bars in his mouth. The kid who always promised more than threatened to fuck Eddies mom. The kid who would come see him late at night after Eddie had been holed up inside all day. The kid Eddie could always turn to. The kid who sat in the hammock with Eddie.

Why did he keep thinking of that hammock? They sat in it more than once together. Even when everyone else had left, or if they’d just gone out by themselves, and there were a million other places to sit, they both shared the hammock. When Richie said that shower caps were stupid, Eddie had taken his off. When Richie said that he liked vanilla ice cream, Eddie made sure to remember. When Richie did this, Eddie remembered that. He never did things the same with the other kids like he did with Richie. 

He kept his hand in Richies, but lifted them both up to the man's cheek. He forced his gaze up and swallowed thickly. “And I’m still just Eddie.”

Maybe that meant a bit more than what he had intended. “And we can be just Eddie and Richie. We don’t have to say that either of us like men or women. It doesn’t matter, man. Hell, I don’t... I don’t know if I could ever be with a woman again after Myra anyways.” Did that mean he was gay too? Or did that mean that he was just done? Just done with people all together?

“I don’t think a shitty relationship dictates your sexuality, Eds,” Richie said, a weak smile pulling at his lips. He kinda wished it did. Then he’d have a fraction of a chance.

Eddie shook his head. “A shitty relationship doesn’t dictate my sexuality, but a shitty mother sure can.” He huffed, then realized what he had said and shut up. 

When had men even become an option? Except it wasn’t men, it was just Richie. It was always just _Richie_. “Whatever, you know what I mean. Just Eddie and Richie, like it’s always been. I’ve been with my fair share of girls and… and I think I’m just happier alone than I am with them.”

For a wonderful second, Richie thought Eddie might kiss his hand. He didn’t, but it was almost like he did. If Richie closed his eyes he could pretend. He wanted to take Eddie’s words and morph them into what he wanted to hear. Eddie was gay or bi or pan or whatever, Richie didn’t care. But... . 

“You mean Richie and Eddie,” he teased. Richie thought that maybe, maybe if Eddie hadn’t said “like it’s always been,” then maybe he would have pushed the limits a bit. Maybe he would have leaned forward and closed the gap between them. Maybe he would have kissed Eddie very softly with the love of someone who had waited since he was eleven years old. Maybe he would have gone for it if Richie Tozier weren’t such a coward. 

He couldn’t think about “Richie and Eddie” too long. He would get flashes of a pocket knife and carving and old wood and the Kissing Bridge and R + E and going back there to re-carve the letters when he thought Eddie was dead. 

“Just like it’s always been,” Richie said, wanting more for change than he ever had before in his life. “I mean, why change what’s already good?”

“I don’t know- I.... I... man I really don’t know.” Eddie breathed out, thumb brushing over Richies cheekbone as he looked at him. 

He felt like maybe he should be more anxious about this whole exchange, or at least more certain, but he didn’t really have a filter, not with everything going on inside him.

“Richie and Eddie. That sounds nice. Better than Eddie and Richie. Both sound alright, though,” he admitted. “But why not make something good into something great?”

And what did he mean by that? He craved not to be alone, not to be left by himself, and he knew Richie would stay. If he asked, Richie would stay in a heartbeat, because despite being a cocky asshole, he was also always there when Eddie needed him to be. “I need time to figure out how to be myself before I can figure out how to be there for someone else, but I want you to stay. You’re my best friend, Rich I-“ _I love you. Even if it’s not romantic, I do love you, with my whole soul, and I’ve been ignoring it for too long. I haven’t said it before, but please know that._ Curse toxic masculinity, the need to keep his emotions to himself, the need to crush them under his foot like he had all these years just because any time he said anything, the person who was supposed to support him, ignored him. Told him he was overreacting. Told him he wasn’t depressed, he was just _overworked, and if he’d only come home from work more to spend more time with his wife-_

“I need you to stay with me right now. If that’s alright. I mean- physically I’ll need some help, I don’t know how long it’ll be until I can even move around, but emotionally too. I’ve... never been alone before. I don’t think I can start right now, maybe some time, but not when I’m like this. I know that’s a lot to ask and you probably have some famous thing or party or something but-“ he swallowed. “Please. Just please.”

Eddie’s touch was gentle. 

Richie could relate to the situation. For the longest time he had the mentality that he couldn’t care for anyone else, couldn’t love anyone else until he could care for himself. Until he was independent, he couldn’t become dependent on another. But Eddie Kaspbrak had to come in and steal those ideas away. 

Richie loved Eddie so much he almost forgot what hating himself felt like. 

_Almost._

“I wanna stay in New York with you,” Richie blurted out before he could think about it. “I wanna stay down there with you. I can, I know I can. Comedy isn’t exactly a one-location kinda thing. I’m on the road more often than not, but I think I’m gonna stay planted until I can stand by myself again. So New York seems like fun. You just also happened to be there. And I’ll be there for you. Whenever you need me. ‘Cause I’m not going anywhere. You couldn’t get rid of me if you tried.” 

The room was filled with a new kind of tension Richie didn’t recognize. It wasn’t awkward like regular tensions. It wasn’t thick or suffocating. It was almost lustful, but more feeling. Then Richie put a word to it. A word he was both fond and afraid of.

Love.

_3_

Richie was a man in love and it actually kinda seemed like Eddie might just be too. This felt like the climax of a cheesy Hallmark romcom. They fought the bad guy, got hurt, won by a hair, and now they were having a heart to heart in the hospital. This was the part where Richie would lean forward and kiss him. Then they would confess their love and elope. 

But life wasn’t a shitty Hallmark romcom. Real life had demon clowns and bullies and self doubt and not everything ended with a bow slapped on top of it. Life was messy and ugly and had loose ends all over the damn place. People were cowards and didn’t confess in real life. Friends were homophobic and wouldn’t be caught dead next to a pansy. 

But Richie hoped. He hoped and he tried for something he could never have. He pushed boundaries and pulled back when those boundaries got too close to breaking because he was absolutely terrified of what was on the other side, good or bad or somewhere in between. 

Richie leaned forward. None of the stitches in his back popped. He kept moving closer, his heart hammering in his chest. He was mere inches away from Eddie’s face and he still didn’t have a plan for when things went south. He didn’t know what he was going to do, he didn’t know-

Richie kissed Eddie’s forehead, like a mother might do to a son. It was soft and tender and warm and real but it wasn’t what Richie really wanted to do. But he was also a coward at heart and he would never break the boundary he and Eddie had. He couldn’t risk it. Especially not now while it was made of glass. He kept trying to see through it, but the image on the other side was too blurred to make anything out.

“Don’t think I wouldn’t drop everything for you, Eds,” Richie explained quietly. “If that makes me clingy and dependent, then fine. I’ve been called worse.”

_4_

Eddie's heart stopped when he got kissed on the forehead, or rather it picked right up again to the point where the monitor beeped in warning before calming down. He looked up to Richie with those wide doe eyes that he’d trademarked so long ago. A mix of afraid and nervous and worried, but mostly surprised. 

He blinked owlishly, and before Richie could pull away, Eddie lifted his hand and cupped his cheek. “This is all so weird,” he whispered out, nose scrunching, “but it was always you, Richie. It was always only you. Even though it feels weird because you have stubble, and your voice is deep, and you are a man, and I had no idea that me liking any of those things was weird or- or....” He shook his head, dismissive, as he brushed a few pieces of hair back behind Richie’s ear, everything feeling fuzzy and floaty. “Or maybe it is, I don’t know.”

Eddie looked at Richie’s mouth, and the feeling in his stomach made him nauseous in a way nothing else did. Then he grinned. “Richie, I think I’m gay,” he said, and it felt like a weight off his chest that he didn’t even know was there. “Wild. Okay. Yeah. _Wow_. That makes a lot more sense, actually. That explains a lot.” He laughed lightly, thinking back to how he felt about Leonardo DiCaprio in the Titanic when he’d seen it in theatre at the ripe age of twenty. The emotional build up from before just sort of broke and his eyes glassed over, cheeks growing red from either embarrassment or the oncoming tears, he wasn’t sure.

He cleared his throat. “Holy shit. Okay. I’m gonna need time to process that, I think. Damn. I didn’t even know that was coming. Sorry, that’s probably a bombshell.” Eddie was talking quietly yet surely as he nodded.

Richie felt all his internal organs flip upside down when Eddie outed himself. He wanted to be surprised, he really did because he was, but with how intimate the moment was, it only felt natural. Both of them were out, not exactly proud, but out nonetheless. They were out to each other, and that was what mattered. 

“Welcome to the club, ya _pansy_ ,” Richie teased, watching Eddie’s eyes begin to well up. He knew that it was emotional, hell, he’d come out not but ten minutes ago, maybe less. If they had been standing, Richie would have given Eddie a noogie, but neither of them would be standing for a while. “Don’t stress about it too hard, Eds. It’s like you said, we’re still Richie and Eddie. Trashmouth and Spaghetti Head, together again at last.” He hummed pleasantly. “I’m glad you told me though. I guess we’re more alike than we thought, huh? Two peas in a pod.” 

Richie decided right then and there that he wouldn’t tell Eddie about his 

_(dirty little secret)_

unrequited feelings. Certainly not now, and probably not ever. Eddie was still figuring things out. He needed to be independent, and if he ever did reach out to hold someone’s hand (not that he ever would, but who knows where life will take you?) he needed someone stable. Someone sturdy who had control of their own life. He didn’t need some wildly inappropriate mess who could barely even tie his own shoes and had dependency issues. Richie Tozier was physically and emotionally unstable, and he knew that. But he also didn’t want to cut Eddie out of his life. (It was at this exact moment that Richie realized one of his co-workers who he had hooked up with numerous times looked and acted almost exactly like a genderbent version of Eddie Kaspbrak.) So Richie would be a presence in Eddie’s life. He would be a friend. A best friend if he was lucky. But he couldn’t keep it bottled up. He had to let it out somehow, even if it wasn’t the whole truth.

“Just so you know, I love you, man. You’re-“ 

_The love of my life. The holder of my heart. My January embers. My one and only. My Eddie. My love. The one for me._

_You’re_ it _for me, Eds._

“Like the brother I never had.” 

The words came out of Richie’s mouth, completely forced and unnatural. Fat chance Eddie didn’t notice. He didn’t even know why he said he loved Eddie. It was true, but not in that context. He didn’t know why he did what he did. That’s what he told himself. 

But in reality, he knew well enough.

  
  


_Eddie Kaspbrak Goes Full Homo_

Eddie's stomach swirled uncomfortably in the best way possible, his palm burned against the sandpaper skin, Richie's eyes were such a deep and dark blue that Eddie got lost in them desperately. He smiled softly, he didn’t know to call it love, but that’s what it was, even though he didn’t know it’s name.

Except he did. It’s name was Richie. Richie Tozier.

Who loved him like a _brother_.

His smile dropped slowly, brow furrowing and face paling. His stomach felt like it had been stabbed again, like there was a gaping hole in his gut and his heart was falling endlessly into it. “Oh.” He said, quite plainly disappointed. “Y-yeah. Yeah. Brothers.” He let go of Richie’s face and instead wiped at his eyes before the tears could actually break despite the complete sickness he felt. “That’s- yeah that’s what I thought too. Richie, I think I would like to just... be alone now. If that’s okay. Today’s been eventful and I’m tired and-“ He cleared his throat, and his hand felt cold without the rough feeling of stubble beneath it. “And I just think I want to be alone right now.” _Because if you stay here, I’m going to cry. I’m going to suffocate. I’m already suffocating. I told you something I didn’t even know, and you didn’t even react,_ he thought loudly, despite not knowing what he wanted. He wanted to kiss Richie, wanted Richie to kiss him, but he also was terrified of the contact. To go forty years never even considering boys and then men an option, to suddenly realizing that that’s all he really wanted to begin with. It was a lot. Eddie wanted to be cared for, but not controlled, and the line was thin and hard not to cross, and a part of him thought that maybe kissing Richie will make him plummet down off of the tight rope he called that Line. It was too fast and not fast enough. It was terrifying, and Eddie didn’t even know what he wanted.

_it had only ever been Richie_ . Could that have even been interpreted in any way other than romantic? Eddie was too much of a coward to flat out say ‘I _need you, I’ve only ever needed you, and I’m sorry that I couldn’t face that or accept that sooner. It’s just that I didn’t even know until now that I’ve only ever been safe with you. You make me need my inhaler because you take every breath from my lungs. You calm me down more than any anti-depressant ever could. You’re like placebos, because you make me think I’m strong, and then I am._ ’ 

But no. _Brothers,_ then. “I just need to sleep.” _To cry where you can’t see._

“Oh,” Richie said plainly like he hadn’t just made Eddie’s face crumble. “Okay.”

For years, Richie had tried to push down what he felt. He was the funny guy at the table, the one who never stopped smiling and always had a witty retort that would make everyone cry with laughter. But Eddie? Eddie had always been able to reach behind the curtain. He could never push it away completely, but he could sneak a peek if he wanted to. Sometimes Richie would let him in, but more often than not, he’d opt to push Eddie out until he was so far away the issue became unrecognizable. So that’s what he did. He was so incredibly close to tell Eddie everything. To spilling it all. Leading him to the bridge. Kissing his soul. Hoping that, in Eddie’s eyes, he would be enough. 

But fear overtook him. What if he wasn’t enough? That would likely be the scenario. Then Eddie would be the one to push Richie away, only he’d never want to see him again. At least with the brother shtik Richie could still talk to Eddie. Maybe, on the rarest of occasions, he could kiss his forehead and hold his hand and say he loved him. But he could never declare his love like people did in Nicolas Sparks movies. He could never hold him while they laid in bed together and whisper sweet nothings to him as they fell asleep. He could never tell him that Eddie was his one, his only. 

Richie supposed he had kind of backed himself into a corner. 

He wheeled himself away from the bed, wanting nothing more than to go back and hold his hand. He didn’t need to ask if Eddie wanted the light off. There was no way he’d be able to sleep in the dark. Not when he had seen what was hidden in the shadows. 

“If you need me, just call me.” Richie looked to his lap and twiddled his thumbs as he added, “or if you _want_ me.” And with that, he left the room. The door clicked shut behind him and Richie wanted to walk away, but he couldn’t walk, not after fucking his body up for Eddie’s sake. So instead he sat with his head against the door, listening, as Eddie was sure to doze off quickly. He had been exhausted. Richie would have been exhausted too, if only he hadn’t felt so numb.

  
  


_Eddie Kaspbrak Watches the World End_

_1_

Eddie watched Richie roll away, and he couldn’t stop the first tears from breaking before the man had even left the room. He made sure to stay quiet until the door clicked shut, though.

He hated crying; it gave him a headache, made him nasally, made his skin blotchy and red. But that was only when he sobbed, and he wouldn’t sob. He wouldn’t even cry. He’d tear up, let a few slip, and then he’d be over it.

It’s not even that he was crying (tearing up) over Richie. It was a mix of everything, and Richie was the tipping point. It was the realization that, and as much as he hated the term, he was a victim of abuse. It was the realization that he was alive, that he could live another 40 years and then some. It was the realization that his newly realized sexuality may very well be influenced by prior experience with the opposite sex, but not entirely. It was the realization that he had ever even had feelings for the same sex. It was the way the room felt quiet and mocking without another body in it.

So yeah, it was Richie, but only sort of. It’s not like he expected anything, but it still hurt to admit something that massive, and then be called brother. He’d already married his mom, he wasn’t about to upgrade (downgrade?) to a sibling. No. That was disgusting. He couldn’t cope with that. He couldn’t even cope with wanting to hold hands, nevermind anything else.

He was crying, yes, tears streaming steadily down his cheeks while he sucked in shaky breaths, inhaling the taste of his own tears mixed with snot. What a sight. But no, he wouldn’t sob, crying yes, sobbing no.

He thought about getting married to Myra, about kissing her and how it always felt stiff, about how she talked about wanting kids, but every time she tried to have sex, Eddie would come up with an excuse. He thought about being guilted into sex. He thought about cuddling and movie watching and dinner and phone calls and walks in the park and clothes shopping and his _honeymoon and his mother’s funeral and Myra’s hand on his back and his shoulder and his face and his neck and-_

And he was sobbing. He was inhaling shakily, his shoulders convulsing with every wavering breath. The heels of his hands pressed suddenly into his eye sockets so hard sparks of white lit up behind them, and he let out a low noise, one that swelled into a yell of frustration, no real words, but a true and definite sob. 

He thought about Richie. About buying Richie ice cream, about laying in a shitty hammock, about reading comics together in comfortable silence, about holding hands while he got pulled along somewhere, about biking together and running through woods and how even though it was all seven of them, he only cared about Richie. 

God, he’d been oblivious, hadn’t he? How he’d felt more comfortable with his best friend than his wife. And now, right as he was confused, he was alone, and it was his fault because he would rather be alone than be faced with something he could never have, even though he wasn’t sure he wanted it even an hour before.

But Richie’s hand had felt so _fucking_ right in his own. His lips had felt so good against his forehead. His stubble had, and he could not express this enough, felt so perfect in his palm.

He couldn’t stop thinking about it, and his heart monitor beeped angrily, yelling at him to calm down, but he just grew frustrated. Eddie was not a violent man, or maybe he was and it had just been repressed and stomped on, but he sat up with a loud noise of pain, and grabbed the room’s TV remote off the bedside table, throwing it at the heart monitor, which just beeped louder. “Shut _up!”_ He shouted wetly, pulling his pillow from behind him to throw as well. “Shut _up! Shut up!_ I know- I _know_ I’m fucking- I can’t- _breathe-_ please just-“ And when that didn’t work, he reached for the moniter and swung his hand up onto the screen, shouting when he felt his stomach jolt in protest, _“fuck!_ Fucking shit- I can’t- just please- why can’t I fucking _breathe?!”_

  
  


_2_

Richie closed his eyes and listened for steady breathing, but what he heard was the beeping of the heart monitor steadily getting faster and faster and louder and louder until Richie was sure he was about to hear it flatline. 

In a rush, Richie tried to turn his chair around, but he couldn’t because he had only started wheeling himself a few hours ago, maybe less. So in a fit of concern and worry about what sounded like crying, Richie stood from his chair and tried to open the door, falling against it with the momentum of his weight. The door swung open and he couldn’t hold himself up, so he slumped against the wall where his head smacked with the momentum of almost falling.

_“Eds!”_ His vision swirled as he tried to look around the room. “Eds, what’s going on? This doesn’t look like sleep to me, you fucking asshole! What the fuck did you do?! What did _I_ do?! I don’t know-“ 

He picked himself up and wiped himself off. Richie could feel blood welling up on his back, his stitches pulling open. He didn’t know how bad it was, and frankly, he didn’t care. He drug himself to the side of Eddie’s bed where he grabbed one of Eddie’s flailing wrists and tried to get his attention. 

“Eddie! Eddie, _look at me!_ Eds, you gotta breathe! You gotta-“ And then suddenly there were two pairs of hands grabbing his shoulders (what the fuck was up with doctors and his shoulders?!) and hoisting him up. The pool of blood growing around where Eddie sat was becoming more and more evident. Everyone kept calling him “Mr. Tozier” and “sir” but that was his father; Richie was just Richie, no more no less.

For the second time in just as many days, Richie was dragged kicking and screaming away from Eddie, who needed his help, who needed some kind of familiarity, who needed to just breathe, to have someone next to him, to help him out of the sewers, to be there for him. Richie wasn’t going to do this again. Eddie had died twice, both times were because Richie wasn’t there and he wasn’t fast enough and he didn’t try hard enough and if he had only tried a little harder. He didn’t know if the flatline was in his head or if it was actually happening, but if it was real then Richie wasn’t going to miss saying goodbye for the third time. 

Richie yanked his arms out of the two doctors’ grasps and ran forward, nearly falling down half a dozen times in the twenty feet away he was from the door. He shoved his way past all the people crowding around Eddie and took his hand, just like he had earlier. Both of his hands around Eddie’s one. Eddie looked at him and his face contorted in pain, like Richie was the one causing the distress. Maybe he was.

Eddie was panicking, that much was clear, and he was mumbling. He mumbled when he panicked, and he spoke fast. He kept mumbling things like, “no- no I can’t Br-breathe- where- where is everyone? Where’s- why am I here? Wh- why can’t I breathe? What’s- wh- I’m not- I’m sick and tired of- I need- need air-“ all while hands dug into his hair and doctors pulled at his arms to get him to stop, snapped in front of his face and waved at him, and he could see them all but none of it mattered. He was hyper aware when he panicked, and everyone touching him made him feel even shittier and hurt even more and then he was bleeding through his bandages and red spotted the thin hospital blanket and then-

Richie’s hands were warm and familiar, just like they always had been.

“Eds-“ Richie’s voice wavered. He had no idea what was about to happen. “Eds, I need you to breathe. You know how, I know you do. This is a panic attack.” Richie was all too familiar with panic attacks. 

_Well shit, Sherlock,_ Eddie thought in the midst of it all, _thank you._ He’d have to smack Richie for that later, even though the concern was there.

“It’s just a panic attack. That’s all.” Richie said the words like he was trying to convince himself more than he was trying to convince Eddie. “You can breathe. Just look at me, and you’ll be okay. Breathe with me.”

Eddie tried to breathe with Richie, and it sort of worked, except every inhale hurt his ribs, and they all shook violently as he sobbed and his hand crushed bones in Richies hand (not actually, but it felt like he was breaking his hand).

“See? Richie and Eds, just like I promised.” A doctor touched Richie’s shoulder and Richie shrugged her off without breaking eye contact with Eddie, Eddie's gaze holding onto his own. “Just like when we were kids. Remember that shitty hammock in the clubhouse we’d share? It was good, right? I loved that hammock. We can go back if you want. See if we’d still fit without breaking the whole thing.” Richie talked when he was nervous, that much was clear. “I bet we’d break it, but that’d be okay. We’d buy a new one. It’s like a shitty metaphor, y’know? Destroy the past. Build a new future.” Richie’s grip on Eddie’s hand tightened, and he’d later blame his mouth on his anxiety. “I don’t want a hammock without you in it next to me.”

A hammock.

_The_ hammock.

It was the hammock that Eddie kept going back to, the hammock that he kept thinking about, and how Richie wanted a hammock so badly that would hold them both, and he called it a metaphor, and Eddies breathing was broader but shakier and less stable, which he wasn’t sure was an improvement. He realized startlingly that the metaphor was for a connection. A relationship. Some kind of bond between the two. Eddie stopped mumbling and stared with his mouth pinched closed and fast breaths coming through his nose. His face was red and his eyes were swollen, but he nodded stiffly, like he was lagging, dragging in breath after breath until his heart monitor calmed down a bit and the doctors let go of his arms but kept a hand firmly on his shoulder to keep him from sitting up and dislodging the stitches more. He only then registered all of the other talking, and his gaze lifted, brow pinched as he looked around at everyone. All of them were looking at him and trying to get him to breathe and calm down and “please try and relax, Mr. Kaspbrak”.

“Enough!” Shouted the doctor who had been in before, making Eddie look sharply to her, jumping lightly. Dr. Bentel effectively shut everyone up. “Out! _Now_. He’s fine. He’s just panicking and more bodies are not helping,” she demanded, and when Eddie's vision cleared out just a little bit, he realized that there were only three other doctors, but it had felt like so much more. They all stood for a second, hesitant to leave while Eddie's air was still uneven. 

He looked back to Richie and his nails dug into the man’s hand. “Don’t leave me, Richie- please I- I sa-said I want to be independent but- I don’t think- I can’t-“ He stopped to breathe. “Independent but not alone- I-... I need you right now- I need our hammock- I need” His mouth came back into a stressed frown before he steadied himself again, determined not to spiral back down. “I need you- I need-“ Eddie made a noise. “I need that fucking heart monitor to shut up,” he seethed, then turned to the doctor. “Can you turn that damn thing off for two minutes? Please? I can’t-“ inhale, “I can’t even have a panic attack in peace in this place- I’m trying to have a fucking _moment_ here-“ He was still worked up and sharp, and his voice scratched and was crisp with emotion as he caught up with himself. 

_Independent, but not alone._

Richie could get on board with that. He watched Dr. Bentel click the screen off, his own gaze challenging her to say no to what Eddie wanted. “Don’t you ever think I’m gonna leave you alone, Eds.” He pursed his lips and shook his head, gaze going back down to the man in question. “Don’t you _ever_ think that.” 

He brought one trembling hand up to Eddie’s face and cupped his cheek. “There’s so much I wanna tell you.” 

Richie got to his feet, his legs shaking like a newborn deer taking its first steps. “But not now. You’re hurt.” He took a single step forward before turning around like he forgot something important. “But I’ll be back. I promise.” Richie took his pinkie finger and wrapped it around Eddie’s. “I break my pinkie promise and I gotta chop off my finger, right?” 

  
  


_3_

Richie got pawned him off to a nurse who fixed his broken stitches in fifteen minutes without putting him under and with barely any anesthesia. He was ordered not to move around for at least twelve hours, but when had Richie Tozier ever listened to the rules?

Half an hour after the nurse left, Richie wheeled himself back to Eddie’s room. He got lost twice, but he got there nonetheless. 

_4_

Eddie was in the same position as earlier, lying face up on his shitty hospital mattress that had new, clean, still-shitty sheets. His eyes were open, but he didn’t really look like he was totally awake, or even functioning. If it weren’t for the heart monitor that the nice lady-doctor had turned back on and the slight movement of his chest, Richie might have thought he was dead. 

“Hey, Eds,” Richie began, taking a deep breath. He just needed to calm down. He’d be fine. He wasn’t about to do anything drastic. Just clear the air a little. That was all. 

“I just uh... I just wanted to say that earlier when I was talking about the hammock and I said I wanted you in my hammock?” He swallowed, and watched Eddies gaze flicker over to him. Eddie swallowed thick and decided through the molasses he had running under his skin that this was worth his utmost attention. “I uh... this is kinda _gay,_ but I meant it. I really did. I want you to be in the next chapter of my life. I dunno if you want the same, but I really hope so. I... I...” 

With Richie Tozier in the room, silence was uncommon. Now it seemed like he was quiet more often than not. 

Eddie wanted to respond, to scream and dance and to punch Richie in the gut. Instead, he wet his lips with his tongue, raised his eyebrows sluggishly, and said nothing.

“I gotta ask though,” Richie began again, totally unsure of himself. “What started that whole mess? I probably said something stupid that I shouldn’t have, so I’m sorry, but I can’t think of anything that would have caused... _that_ kind of reaction. So what was it?”

They pumped Eddie full of something stronger than morphine since that hadn’t quite done the job last time, stitched him up, and let him lay in dead silence. He’d never liked dead silence, but he’d _always_ liked Richie. Eddie offered a barely there quirk of his lips, before blinking and looking up. He felt like he’d been mixed into jam; everything was sticky and slow. “Everything,” he answered honestly. “Absolutely everything.”

He didn’t really move as he spoke, blinking and breathing but otherwise docile, his face still pink from crying, but not bright red like before. “It’s going to take a long time for me to... to figure it all out. Forever, maybe.” Eddie admitted, “but between dying, and divorce, and... you. I just thought you were here, and that somehow we had admitted something neither of us was prepared for. And then you said-“ He smiled a bit more, scoffing, but it was empty, and it still sort of stung when he said it out loud again. “Then you said you loved me...” He furrowed his brow incredulously and glanced over to Richie, mocking him. “You said you loved me like a _brother_. That’s a real blue baller, by the way. No wonder you suppress your queerness if that’s how you plan on picking up guys,” he stated, voice a bit gravelly from his episode.

Myra would’ve, and she’d only voiced this once, perhaps put him in a closet if he’d panicked like that in front of her. Sat against it until he calmed down enough for her to let him out. He really needed to stop thinking about her. Eddie pinched his eyes closed and shook his head. “I don’t know. I want to... love you, but that’s really hard for me to say. I’m sorry, toxic masculinity and whatnot. I thought I was straight and then I realized that what I felt for you was, in fact, love. It’s just... a lot to deal with. I needed you gone and I needed you here all at once. And now,” he lifted his arm lazily, to show the tube plugged into his vein, “now I’m pumped full and numb, and it’s surprisingly easy to explain this a bit better.” There was a small noise as Eddie dropped his arm to his side again.

“You may have hated that part of yourself, and repressed it, but I didn’t even know it existed for me. I’m not saying that your fight is any less valuable or valid, I’m just.... needing to take time to accept it. If that makes sense. I got overwhelmed, and I broke, but when a bone breaks, and heals the wrong way, it’s got to be broken again before it can be fixed. I needed to break so now... now I can start to... figure this all out. To fix. Right. Yes. That’s what I wanted to say. I... God, this is wild, but I do love you too, Richie, as a friend at least, but I think in a stronger way than that too.” 

There was a silence, but for the first time in a long time, Eddie didn’t mind the quiet.

If Richie had been eleven when Eddie told him that, he probably would have kissed him on the spot. Probably jumped on top of him and kissed him like nobody was watching. Then he probably would have drug Eddie off the the Aladdin and they would have watched whatever movie they wanted and held hands the whole time while sharing a bucket of popcorn. Richie would drop Eddie off at his doorsteps and in an ideal world Mrs. K would have let them have their moment. Eddie would kiss him and say that he had fun. Richie would say he did too. Then they’d make plans to do it again. 

If Richie had had been fifteen when Eddie told him that, Richie probably would have cried. He would have asked Eddie if he really meant it, if he was being for real. He would cry loudly and for a long time, but they’d slowly turn into tears of joy and wonder. He would nervously hold Eddie’s hand while they walked to the arcade to play _Street Fighter_. Then maybe Richie would have told Stan and Bev, who would have told everyone else. The Losers would know. 

If Richie had been eighteen when Eddie told him that, he would have shoved Eddie away. He would have said that he wasn’t queer, and he didn’t feel the same way. He would have apologized and never forgotten about what could have been because at eighteen, Richie had long realized that all the boys didn’t look at other boys the same way he did. He had always known there was Eddie, Eddie the exception, but now there was more to drool over. Except he was the only one drooling. 

If Richie had been twenty-six when Eddie had told him that, Richie would have said, “who?”

But Richie was forty, and Eddie was telling him now. And he didn’t know how to react. All he could think of was how Eddie had said, “I love you, but I think in a stronger way too.” The words echoed in Richie’s head as he tried to think of a multitude of ways to reply. _I love you too. I didn’t mean what I said about being brothers, that’s weird. Kiss me. Can I kiss you? Eddie, I’ve loved you since before I was like fourteen. Me too. I love you too. I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving you. You’re the love of my life. My first love. My Eddie._

But Richie kinda felt like he was breathing through a pinhole, so he said a choked, _“cool.”_

Eddie snorted and rolled his head away. It was like when Richie played _Sims_ in his twenties and one would say something, and the other would react with a bright red minus sign. _Cool_ , Richie scolded himself, _he said he loved you and you said fucking_ cool.

That was not what he wanted to say.

“I lied,” Richie blurted out on top of that. “Earlier. About you being my brother. That is so fucking weird.” Well, that was one way to get a point across. “But I wasn’t kidding when I said I loved you. I-I love you in the way that when I see you, my heart starts to pound. My hands get clammy and I become overly concerned with what I’m wearing. I love you like... like-... shit, I’m so bad at this. Like I’ve loved you since we were thirteen and you first climbed into that hammock with me because I was an asshole and didn’t move when my ten minutes were up. I knew my ten minutes were up. I knew every single time. The first time I was just being a shithead, but after that I was always hoping you’d get in with me. And you did. Every single time.” 

He took a shaky breath and blinked too many times. _No more tears, Trashmouth. We’ve had enough of those today._ “Earlier, when I said what I said about being brothers, that was a bunch of bull. I’ve never said a bigger fucking lie. Never once have I seen you as a sibling, Eds. Not once. But I’m so goddamned scared of losing what we already have. I’m still scared. But I’m selfish and I’m greedy and I want more than what we already have. I wanna love you Eds because I’ve been in love with you since we were thirteen or twelve or fourteen or-... I don’t even know anymore. Since as long as I can remember. And honestly? I don’t think I ever stopped.”

Eddie wouldn’t cry again. He’d been all cried out, but his head pounded brightly and startlingly. He let out a shaky breath, a heavy and weighted one, but a good one. “I think I liked you? I’m still not sure, I just didn’t really know that that’s what it was, and then my mom freaked out over the whole AIDS crisis, and I got terrified- do you remember when I wouldn’t even touch anyone for two weeks without freaking out and pulling out hand sanitizer? Yeah. It wasn’t.... it wasn’t pretty. I sort of just forgot about it after that- I met a girl and-“ He scrunched up his nose. “I honestly don’t even remember asking her out, or asking her to marry me. My mom just sort of loved her, and it all kind of happened like water- like one whole fluid thing. So I just never confronted those feelings I had for you or- or Robert Downey Junior- or Bill Hader-“ He blinked and shook his head. “It wasn’t weird to me to find men attractive, as long as I didn’t act on it. And if my stomach swirled when a handsome person smiled at me, that was fine as long as I didn’t say anything,” Eddie explained, smoothing his hand over his blanket.

“So it’s hard, but... I want to love you,” and he sort of cringed at that, but in a good way, and there was a small smile in it somewhere. “I have never been more scared than I was when you were about to be killed by... Stan.” That felt weird to say for obvious reasons. “I was shaking so badly, because I knew if you died I... I wouldn’t know what to do. You’re everything to me, and if I had let you die I-“ He blinked down and looked at his own hand on his stomach. “I’m sorry for dying. That must have been hard for you, seeing me dying like that. I don’t know what I would have done if I were you, Rich.” His hand lifted, and it was shaking slightly as he decided to cup the man’s face again, because he missed the feeling, and his hand felt like it was home there. “To love someone and then have them die in front of you like that, that must have been horrible.”

“You’re probably the only guy in the world who would apologize for dying,” Richie said. “But um... yeah. Yeah, it’s not great. You just uh...” He cracked a tiny grin and sang (really poorly), “you just died in my arms tonight,” and then laughed sadly. 

Richie didn’t know how to say it was like his heart had been pulled out his chest and crushed. He didn’t say that killing It in the way that they did was like sweet revenge. He didn’t want to talk about how he had fought not to bring Eddie back up the well, because he knew that wasn’t going to happen before Neibolt collapsed, but he had fought to stay down there with him. He didn’t mention that his screams had turned from “he’s just hurt!” to “we can still help him!” to “we can’t leave him alone!” to “Eddie!” He didn’t talk about how he had cried at the Quarry and dropped his glasses in the water because his hands were shaking so badly or how anger burned to life in him at the sign of Ben and Bev kissing because it wasn’t fucking fair that they got to be happy while Richie was left to suffer. He didn’t talk about how he went back to the Townhouse and sat on Eddie’s bed rather than his own. Eddie’s blood was still on the carpet in red dots from when Bowers stabbed him in the face. He didn’t tell him how he had eventually gone back to the Kissing Bridge with a pocket knife he bought at Freese’s and traced over their initials. Bill had talked about letting scars heal over, both metaphorically and literally, but Richie hadn’t been ready for that scar to heal, so he reopened the wound. He carved the initials deep and smiled while he did it. He wore Eddie’s grey jacket and it still smelled like him so it was almost like he was there. Almost like Eddie was still alive. Almost. But almost was never good enough.

“You have no idea...” Richie trailed off. “It’s worse than anything you can imagine. I don’t-... I’ve never been that scared before.” He snickered. “You scared me worse than the clown, Eds. Pennywise ain’t got shit on you.” 

But really, the second time Eddie died had been worse. At least the first time Richie had been there. He had been at Eddie’s side until he stopped breathing and then killed the fucking clown. The second time was on Richie. If he had just been faster... maybe it could have been avoided. And he would never forgive himself for that.

Eddie scoffed, but then Richie went quiet again, and if he tried, he could see the man thinking. “I’m here now,” he hummed, “and that’s what’s important, Rich.” He brushed his fingers through Richie’s hair, this time with purpose. 

“Okay, I was trying to be some kind of romantic but…” Eddie pulled his hand away and rubbed his fingers together. “I need you to shower before I ever touch your hair again.“ He wiped his hand on the hospital bed. “I want to do things like run my fingers through your hair, but you really need conditioner, Richie- Sorry-“ Eddie added with a grimace, then let out a breath. “I’m also sorry that I’m like that, I don’t try and be an asshole, I just _cannot_ stand-“ He forced his shoulders to relax. “God, sorry.”

He looked back up to the ceiling. “This is going to take more adjusting than I thought, but I’ll be able to do this properly soon, I promise that. I just-“ His fingers extended tensely and then curled into fists against his thighs. “I need to realize that not everything is out to kill me. Even though it definitely is. But it’s not- I’m a risk analyst, and I know that it’s not, but I am trying so hard not to ask for hand sanitizer right now and I promise that I will be able to do these things... eventually.” 

Eddie blinked to Richie apologetically. “I really do want to touch your hair and run my hands through it, and I’m sorry I can’t, but I will, and that’s what I’m trying to focus on. That I... that we are going to be okay.” He smiled, in that awkward/scared/hopeful way that only Eddie Kaspbrak could pull off. “Hopefully with no more unnecessary death.”

“No, it’s fine,” Richie said, suddenly becoming aware of how unlike themselves they sounded. They were having a real, _adult_ conversation. Well, adult- _ish._ At least, there wasn’t any banter or teasing. And it wasn’t completely horrible. “Really, I’ve been in so much shit-“ Literally. Haha. “-in the past few days that it’s a miracle you haven’t burned off all your nose hairs just sitting next to me.” Richie ran his fingers through his hair, and _wow,_ it was bad. He didn’t want to smell himself. He had probably gone nose-blind to it like twenty-four hours ago. Richie hadn’t showered in almost three days, and within those three days, he waded through the sewer twice, dug through the remains of a house, jumped in the Quarry with his clothes on, sobbed (a lot), carried a bloody body, and about a hundred thousand other things that he couldn’t remember off the top of his head. 

“I’m actually not even supposed to be in here, so I uh-...” Richie pointed a finger toward the door like he was going to leave but he made no other motion to go shower. He didn’t want to leave Eddie. It seemed like every time he left Eddie alone, he got hurt or died. And it was when they were separated that they were at their worst. 

  
  


_Patricia Uris Wants to Kill her Husband_

_1_

Patricia Uris owned one pair of sneakers. They were the sneakers that she wore to yoga classes every other week at a quaint little studio called _A Bit of a Stretch,_ and when she went running twice a week. They were black, and the right shoe had a hole along the seam of the sole and the foot where her pinkie toe poked out. They were old, but they were comfortable, and she liked them. 

_Better take the Sudan-ley to get some new ones soon._ She heard herself say, and somewhere , in the back of her mind where that voice echoed, she heard her husband scoff over a copy of _The Atlanta Journal-Constitution._

A rock poked into the heel of Patty’s foot as she paced in her sneakers, now dirty with dust and gravel and grass. The hole tore more, and now truly, she did need new shoes. These wouldn’t do anymore for running. 

_These won’t do anymore for running._

She paced down a long cinematic hallway of a hospital. She paced and her shadow glistened over the fresh floors, almost a reflection but not quite. _Eggs,_ she thought, _Stan would like some eggs when we get home. Eggs but no bacon. He’s not great at being Jewish, but he’s not_ that _bad._ Stan prayed, he went to temple when he felt stressed or anxious, and he came home quiet. He ate meat, but never pork, never bacon. He learned Hebrew, but he’d forgotten it long since.

He wasn’t a perfect Jewish man, but he was Jewish, and he was (and Patty could and would testify) a man. (One _helluva_ man.)

_Eggs._ _I need to pick up eggs. And peaches. He loves peach cobbler. It’s why he was so excited to move to Atlanta. Think of all the peaches, Patty!_

Her sneakers didn’t click like her teaching shoes would, the small one-inch black heels she spent the day teaching seventh graders in. They didn’t click, but they made her feel young, like she could run—

( _These won’t do anymore for running.)_

—a hundred miles.

Her arms crossed over her chest as she waited for something, anything; a noise in the endless halls of the labyrinth where people came to die. Patty kicked a foot out, and it scuffed the floor.

_Ice cream. Can’t have peach cobbler unless it’s with ice cream. Stan likes vanilla._

Stan hadn’t eaten ice cream in years. Neither of the Uris’s were big on sugar unless it was fruit or chocolate. Ice cream was nice, but Stan found it sticky and overwhelming if there were bits of things in it, so it—

( _Unless it’s with peach cobbler, Stan loves peach cobbler.)_

—was avoided. 

The mental grocery list got longer until Patty stopped pacing and pulled out her phone to open a notepad. Her leg shook as she typed the list out shakily. A strand of blonde hair, once clearly golden, but faded with time and kept alive with highlights, fell from where it was pulled into a ponytail. 

_Eggs._

_Peaches._

_And butter, for the cobbler, we’re out of butter._

_Vanilla ice cream._

_PAM spray. So nothing sticks._

_Tin foil—_

“—Mrs. Uris?” 

A small gasp left her mouth and she tensed so suddenly her phone clattered to the ground, safe in the protection of its _LifeProof_ case, one that she’d gotten the year before when Stan had said that it was too expensive a phone and too vibrant a life to go about without safety. “Shit,” she cursed quietly, then tried to smile, but she knew that a streak of blood on her face made the doctor purse his lips. “Sorry”

_My husband’s blood. The blood my husband got on me when I dug him out of the ground. The blood he got on my face when his ice cold hands reached out for me and-_

“I didn’t mean to startle you, Mrs. Uris—“

“Patty, please just- just Patty,” she insisted as she bent and grabbed her phone, hands shaking. As she reached for it she caught sight of blood on her—

( _Stan’s)_

_—_ hoodie. There were handprints on the forearms of the jacket, where Stan had

_grabbed my arms in panic. I’ve never seen him panicked like that. The blood is from where he grabbed my arms while he looked at me. Blinked at me. Bled at me._

gripped her. 

She picked up the phone, and the doctor waited for her to click it off and shove it in her pocket. The ex-widow hadn’t looked in a mirror for nearly a week, and she was sure she looked like the addicts that she and her husband saw occasionally downtown on corners and by garbage bins. 

“It’s alright… Patty. It’s tense times,” the doctor told her, and she smiled, but it felt forced. Really, she wanted to hit him. He had no right to say something like that. She lost her husband. She lost her husband because he killed himself. He

_Slit his wrists open and painted the town—_

_(Our bathroom)_

_—red._

killed himself and the doctor called it _tense. “_ Your husband is… a medical marvel, really, is all we can call it,” he said. The man looked a few years senior to Patty, his eyes older, grey from seeing too much pain. His hair was once surely dark, but now streaked with salt, and it receded around his temples. It had been slicked back with a gelled comb at some point, but patty wasn’t sure it was that morning, and his glasses were thick enough and big enough that they reminded her of someone she had never seen before (but her husband had seen, many times in fact, when he was young and would accompany a certain pseudo asthmatic to a certain pharmacy, and meet a certain pharmacist, who had certain— _familiar_ —glasses).

“He’s- he’s alright though?” She asked quietly, and her voice shook with tears. “Like he’s not- he isn’t dying or anything?”

“Well, it’s still early, ma’am, but as long as there aren’t any complications he should be just fine.” 

She nodded, but she knew she was shaking. Normally confident and precise, not to her husband’s degree, but enough, Patty felt broken. 

“We would, however, like to keep him for another week or so. Make sure he doesn’t reject the transfusion or need any more surgery. He’s… he’s going to walk out of here— not without scars— but… within his own life.”

“So he’s nuh-not dead?”

Her voice squeaked like the swing on their back deck.

For the age and aesthetic of the doctor before her, his smile felt strangely like home. “He’s not dead, Patricia. He’s awake now, and asking for you. He is a very lucky man to have made it this far.”

Patrica Uris deflated and closed her eyes, let out a tense breath, and then grew only minimal spite as she hissed a quiet, “bastard. Lucky bastard. I’ll kill him.” But the tension melted and when she opened her eyes, the hostility was gone. 

Patty walked with purpose, with strides that she knew Stan liked to follow in public, towards his room. She hadn’t strayed far, and quickly she overpowered the doctor’s speed and found her own way. 

Without bothering to knock, she went in.

  
  


_2_

The door opened and the soft morning sun filtered into the room leaving it in a warm glow. It was a stark contrast from the eerie shaded lighting of the hallway, and basking in the sun was the body of her husband. 

Stan was tucked neatly under blankets, his skin looked like that of a porcelain doll, and neat, tidy stitches went up each long vertical cut on his arm. The cuts were angry and red, irritated with the weight of existence, irritated with the responsibility of blood transfer taking place beneath the glass skin. His nails were red, purple at the base, and his nails chipped and with dirt beneath them. They looked akin to a junkyard next to a golf course when compared to how Stan usually kept his nails filed and picked. Where Stan's eyes sat usually sunken, they sunk further, and Patty’s gaze traced along the folds of skin where his chin doubled and tripled under the relaxed position of his jaw. Her eyes went to his cheeks, hollowed and greying, and to the bags beneath his eyes, worse than when tax season is starting at the firm. She met his eyes. His glassy eyes that remained evermore half-lidded under the overwhelming light. His glassy eyes that, usually brown, were grey around the edges. His glassy eyes that were consumed by fat pupils and staring with the very same dead stare she was met when she found him. The only indicator that he was even alive was the slow and measured blink that he greeted her with, alongside the slow and weak beat of his heart on the monitor beside him. 

His fingers twitched, and a noise came from his throat, but his lips didn’t move. They were cracked and yellow; brown and bruising where they’d been stitched and pulled. They were swollen, and as she took a step closer, she saw cracks of red on the inside curve of his lip.

“Stanley,” she breathed, and his hand lifted towards her, only a few inches, before his brow pinched and it dropped, the stitches pulling at his muscles like a puppeteer upon strings. 

Patty immediately felt the trance break when she saw him pinch his eyes closed. She quickly stepped over to the window and twisted the stick that hung beside the blinds to dim the light, but that was absent and to ease his pain before she quickly came to his side. Stan blinked, and now his eyes opened wider into the softer light of the room. His wife carefully soothed a hand over his chest and examined him, like maybe he just had the flu, her palm flattened over his ribs and she felt for his breath. Knowing, he inhaled deeper, and when she moved her hand up to his chest, he wished he could will his heart to beat harder. 

“Patty?” He asked gently, but his voice was rough and sore, and his lips hardly touched so it sounded more like _paddy?_

“I’m here,” she soothed, and her other hand came up to run through his hair. His eyes closed as her nails raked gently over his scalp. How Patty hadn’t noticed before, she wasn’t sure, but now, as she moved Stan's hair (perfectly quaffed, even upon death), she saw a stark silver streak along the side of his head that she was certain had never been there before. It wasn’t quite white, but it was brighter than the grey that came with age. The closer she looked, the more she noticed that there were rogue hairs like that all throughout his head. 

She leaned forward, closed her eyes tight, and pressed a firm, lasting kiss to her husband's temple. Where her hand remained over his chest, she felt it shake, and for the first time since the night after their wedding, Patty knew that Stan was scared and uncertain.

Stanley Uris was never uncertain.

Patty pulled back, but only enough to press her forehead to his, and from there she could feel his shaky exhales against her chin and bottom lip, she could hear the quiet noises in the back of his throat, and when she looked, she could see the redness under his eyes.

“It's alright,” she promised again, and Stan broke.

Tears swelled and came down in fat streaks over his ashy cheeks, his shoulders shook with such force that Patty was sure they would set some sort of sensor off to bring in doctors, but no doctors came. 

“No,” Stan tried, “no, no, no, they’re all dead. They’re all dead, and this is my punishment. This is my hell. They’re all dead- they’re all dead,” he said quietly, over and over again, like a man gone mad. Patty felt her heart break.

“What? What do you mean? Who’s dead?”

“ _Them._ ” Stan answered, as if it were any kind of answer at all. “I tried— I tried to be brave, I did, I said goodbye. They’re all dead, oh sweet _Jesus,_ almighty, Father I-“ His breath picked up uncomfortably, and his voice raised in volume and pitch. Somehow, he sounded young, like a boy, not a man. “ _Please_ , I’m _sorry! I was just scared!”_ Stan cried, in a way he’d only cried once before, as a child with a woman’s teeth buried deep in his skull and his own blood streaking down his cheeks. 

Patty had, when Stan had gotten frantic, sat up. Her eyes widened and she listened, trying to decipher what her husband was spewing. “Stan! _Stanley!”_ She called into the void of his mind, and somewhere, he grabbed on. He didn’t stop sobbing openly in a manner intensely concerning, but he did stop crying out for help from his Father, heavenly or otherwise, Patty wasn’t sure. She’d never heard Stan pray like that before.

“I’m a _coward_ ,” Stan muttered as his head fell back against the pillow, tears filling his eyes like an endless river, and he thought vaguely, _if only we could build a dam like before._ “I couldn’t face It again, I couldn’t, I _can’t, I can’t I can’t I can’t—“_

“Stan, you need to calm down,” Patty tried, and finally his eyes found her, they ripped away from some unseen being that he found far too much fear in, and they found her as she cupped one cheek. Her other hand found the mirroring cheek, and he sunk into her grasp like she’d grabbed the nape of a kitten's neck. He relaxed. “Please, lovely, please calm down.”

He blinked at her, and his bruised lips pulled back into a grimace. There was a moment of silence, but as with everything wrong in the world, he cracked a little bit further. His crying was ugly, ugly crying for a beautiful man, and Patty knew only how to comfort him by pulling his head against her chest. She leaned down and embraced him, and his head rested against her left breast where he wet her shirt and could hear her heart beneath any tissue and bone. 

Like that, they stayed. They stayed until Stanley Uris cried so hard he faded from consciousness, and for once, welcomed a dream of nothing but bluebirds.


	4. Descrying Hearts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Delicious. 
> 
> Finally, some good fucking good.

_Eddie Kaspbrak Gets Some Jell-O_

_However,_ Richie was greasier than a New York subway rat, so he needed to take a shower. 

“I’m gonna sneak back to my room and take a quick shower,” he said before realizing it would take more than a few minutes to wash his hair six times because that’s what it needed. “I’ll be back though,” he promised, and he meant it.

And with that, Richie left Eddie’s room and headed for his own. Once in his room, Richie realized he didn’t quite know how to shower when standing for more than thirty seconds made his knees buckle and he fell over. So he wound up sitting on the floor of the shower and letting the water run over him, something he used to do a lot as a kid. 

_I want to love you._

_You’re everything to me._

_To love someone._

Richie stayed under the lukewarm water for over half an hour before turning off the faucet and getting to his feet. He redressed himself in his hospital gown and got in his wheelchair, his hair still dripping so his clothes were wet around the shoulders. He went back to Eddie and didn’t even let him breathe before talking the second he was inside.

“Hey Eds,” Richie cooed, grabbing his attention. “You got me all wet.”

“I’m going to pretend that wasn’t a sex joke.” Eddie said simply, eyes closed as if he’d been dozing. His voice was a bit groggy, and he may have been dozing in and out, but he was happy to be awake with Richie back. “And don’t call me that.”

Eddie lifted his hand and pressed the button on his bed that made him sit more upright. “I cannot wait to have abdominal control again. Sitting up will never have felt so good,” he complained idly, then actually spared Richie a glance. He softened a bit with a sigh and a small smile. “There we go. Now I just need to get you shaving again, and we’ll be good,” he teased, and realized overwhelmingly that he didn’t know if he cared whether or not Richie shaved. _Interesting._

“What? You’re not into hairy guys?” Richie rubbed at his chin which barely had a stubble and grinned. Eddie snorted and rolled his eyes.

“I’m excited to shower,” Eddie said. “I’m gonna do it three times the first day, just because I can.”

(Richie couldn’t help but thinking that taking three showers *just cause* was such an Eddie thing to do.)

Eddie had gotten a light wash down after he wasn’t on death row, but he had sat in the sewers for nearly twelve hours. It had soaked into his pores. But he didn’t want to think about that, and so he segued. “What’s the first thing you’re going to do once we’re free?” He asked. “When I’m better, I think... I think I’m going to go visit my mom’s grave and tell her what happened. She’s just outside Derry in the cemetery, and I know she sometimes did the wrong things for the right reasons, but I think she’d want to know what happened. To know that I’m going to be okay, because she did care about me,” Eddie decided, accidentally not leaving room for Richie to answer. 

“You should come, too... if you want,” he tacked on, and it sounded like a big deal, maybe because it was. Eddie was blatantly (okay, maybe _passively_ ) asking Richie for emotional support. “It’s...” and in an attempt to lighten the offer, he added, “it’s been awhile since your last date,” with a small laugh.

Richie listened when Eddie talked of his mother, although he didn’t understand. He didn’t know why Eddie would want to give his dead mother peace of mind. He didn’t know why Eddie would want to visit the woman who made the first eighteen years of his life absolute hell. Maybe it was just because he didn’t understand. Maggie had been flawless in comparison to Sonia. She let Richie go out with friends and play in the rain (so long as he toweled off before coming inside and didn’t stay out long enough to catch a cold). She let Richie eat ice cream and try new foods without being worried that he was going to be allergic to everything in them. When she took him to the doctor it was because Richie was either running a particularly nasty fever or was ill to the point that you could visibly see it on him. She hadn’t been actually flawless though. On more than one occasion, Richie had heard her wish that she had a girl so that she could understand her child. Sometimes she and Went would leave Richie alone for days with only a small stack of bills on the counter. Once, when Richie had come home with a black eye after getting punched by 

_Bill Denbrough because Bill Denbrough wanted to go back into the crackhead house to search for his dead brother even though Eddie had nearly been killed! Bill didn’t understand he didn’t care he didn’t-_

some dickwad, Maggie had told him not to cry because boys don’t cry, Richie, _boys punch back._

Maybe Richie just didn’t understand. He was beginning to understand that there was a lot he didn’t understand and that was going to have to be fine. 

“Is that how the kids ask each other out now?” Richie quipped. “Ask them to the cemetery to look at dead people’s gravestones?” It was such a weird way to ask someone out. But Richie being Richie and absolutely smitten said, “sounds fun. I’m in. I’ll pick you up at seven and bring roses. But only because you know I’ll jump at any chance to see Mrs. K again. I always was her favorite.”

Everyone knew Richie was Sonia’s least favorite. She hated him. So was that comment insensitive? Maybe a little. Was it too soon? Probably. But Richie was the guy who made the inappropriate jokes that you laughed at because they were simply funny even if they were a little offensive. Not that making an almost “your mom” joke was funny. 

But then Richie backtracked. “Wait, how did you know I haven’t been on a date in a long time? I know I said I’m not married or seeing anyone but what if I’ve got friends with benefits? Maybe I met someone on Grindr recently.” He squinted accusingly. “You don’t know me.”

Eddie rolled his eyes. “It was a joke, dickwad. I meant a date with my mom. Now you’re getting all defensive though, and it’s making me think that maybe you’ve been celibate,” he taunted.

It felt good knowing that Richie would come with him, and maybe Eddie could... he didn’t know what he’d do. Maybe he’d tell his mother that he was realizing things, and he still loved her, but he needed to do things for himself.

Or maybe he’d laugh at the grave, spit on it, and do a little dance.

He sort of doubted that though.

He did love his mother. He loved his mother desperately. After his dad died when he was five, and he’d gotten sick, she was so scared that she wrapped him in figurative (and sometimes literal) bubble wrap. He didn’t blame her, even if all of the other Losers sometimes did, even if she sometimes deserved the blame.

His therapist wouldn’t like that thought. His therapist would say that that’s base level Stockholm Syndrome.

So while Sonia was overbearing, parents like Maggie were willy nilly. They didn’t care. They let their kids go out in the rain, and eat too much ice cream, and try new foods without even checking if Richie could be allergic to them. It all seemed careless to Eddie, but normal to everyone else, and everyone else thought that Sonia was the weird one. 

“Me? Abstinent? You’re a fuckin’ riot, Eds, lemme tell you that,” Richie said, wiping away a tear that wasn’t really there. 

From the outside looking in, it may have seemed like all the jokes were Richie overcompensating for the fact that he was still a forty-year-old virgin, but they _weren’t._ And some people might want to brag about not knowing the names of all the people they’d slept with or even knowing how _many_ , but in actuality, it was shameful. And the worst part about it was that Richie could still count the number of _real_ relationships he’d had on his hands because he fell hard and he fell fast. There had been a girl more than a few years ago, Richie’s most recent partner that was more than a fling or a friend with benefits, and after only seven months of dating, she told him she didn’t want kids. So Richie got a vasectomy. Cut to three months later, they broke up, so Richie tried to get the vasectomy undone in case his next girlfriend (there was no next girlfriend, but at the time, he didn’t know that) wanted kids. He quickly found out the hard way that it was a lot harder for surgeons to go backwards than forwards. 

“Right then,” Eddie agreed, “when we can walk, we’ll go, then we can go back to New York.”

“But that’s a while away, Spagheds,” Richie countered, forcing himself not to think of his past. It wasn’t pretty. “What are you gonna do until then?” They both knew that neither of them would be walking freely within the next few days. Richie would probably be okay to leave Bangor in a week or so, but who knew how long Eddie would need? He had been stabbed through the chest and died. And then died again. But that wasn’t something you could walk off. He would need time, lots and lots of time. Therapy, probably. Both mental and physical. Lord knew Richie needed to talk to someone. But not to a therapist. People said therapy wasn’t for everyone, and Richie figured out a long time ago he wasn’t one to lay down on a couch and talk about his feelings. 

“Eat, sleep, piss in a catheter, you know... the usual,” Eddie offered. “Which, FYI, I do _not_ recommend. My junk feels completely violated.” He shifted uncomfortably. “Not much I can do until I’m up and about, so might as well do nothing at all.” Eddie had always hated doing nothing, it made his skin itch, made him get jittery and uneasy. He often made (burnt) dinner, cleaned the dishes and put them away, and did the day’s laundry all after work. Many times he did more, and the only thing that he really found he could be put at ease with was reading.

Now though, now he felt like he could sit for a hundred years and still be content just sitting, even though realistically he’d be stir crazy by the end of the week. “And worry, maybe. Maybe I’ll catch up on all my worrying. The doctor said they’ll have to go back in after a day or two once I’ve had time to adjust so they can check on my nerve and spinal damage,” Eddie explained, fingers tapping on his leg. “They said I should be fine since I could feel them poke at my feet with a pen. Said that was a good sign, but I can’t not be a little bit concerned. I don’t know what I’d do if I ended up in a wheelchair for the rest of my life- not that that's a bad thing- I just...” And he was trying to be sensitive, to look at everyone who was in a wheelchair for their lives and think ‘hey, that doesn’t look so bad’, but such a heavy part of him desperately clawed at the hope he wouldn’t have to do that. They could do it; Eddie couldn’t. He didn’t think he could make it another forty years handicapped like that. 

“It would suck balls,” Richie said, wheeling himself back and forth in his wheelchair, “if you had to stay in a wheelchair forever. I’ve only had this thing for a couple of hours and I’ve already stood up twice and nobody has pushed me down the halls at insane speeds, so frankly, I’m disappointed.” 

“It’s like, a super small chance of something going wrong but I’m just-” He clenched his hands into fists as he shrugged his shoulders tightly and shook his head, then relaxed. “Worried, I guess. It’s stupid. I’m fine. So yeah. That’s the plan until I can walk and get discharged. Eat, sleep, piss, and worry.” He looked to Richie, seemingly content with that answer from himself. “What are you going to do? You’re more mobile than me. You should steal all of the Jell-O in the cafeteria. Is there Jell-O? All of the hospital drama shows have Jell-O.”

What was Richie going to do? Well, for one, definitely steal all the Jell-O in the hospital. It was probably off-brand and sugar free or some shit, but it was Jell-O nonetheless. Then he’d bring it all back to Eddie and spoon feed it to him until he exploded. It was probably all green Jell-O too. Green was the worst. Blue reigned supreme. Red was on thin fucking ice, but it could stay only because Eddie liked it.

“I’ll bring you back Jell-O, Eds, don’t you worry.”

Eddie loved that Richie would bring him Jell-O, and he tried not to let that show on his face, but he really did. “See if they have red,” he requested. “I haven’t had Jell-O since I was like fifteen.” 

After that? Richie didn’t know what he was going to do. Maybe call his manager back; Alex was pissed as all hell. Richie had packed his shit in the middle of the night and left, leaving only a quick text that said, “going on impromptu vacay!!! ttyl xoxo”. It also didn’t help that Richie had been in the middle of a tour. He should have been in Denver at the moment, but instead he was in Bangor, Maine, trying not to wince every time Eddie’s breath hitched. He had already missed his dates in Reno, so what was Denver on top of that?

Maybe he’d start writing his own material, too. That’s what he had done in the beginning of his career. He wrote his own stuff and maybe it was knowing that the punchline was one of his own or maybe it really was true, but it seemed like when it was his material, the audience liked it better. They laughed louder and applauded longer. God only knew Richie had enough stuff stored away. Plenty of stories to spin into comedic bits. It would be harder, yeah, but maybe it would be like when he was a nobody in LA where he was excited to go on stage, and he didn’t dread every second of it.

“After Jell-O, I’ll definitely have to reenact Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride with your mom. But after that?” Richie raised a brow and thought about what to say. Normally it wasn’t this hard. He didn’t know whether to make another joke or be sincere. Make a joke, be sincere. Joke. Sincere. Joke Sincere. Sincere, joke. 

“Make a leech outta myself and stick to your side until you either rip me off or I drain the life out of you and you tell me to go fuck myself.”

Richie wasn’t sure what the ever-loving fuck had just come out of his mouth, but it sounded accurate enough. After all, he wasn’t leaving Eddie’s side. Not again. He wasn’t going to forget this time, even if it meant remembering all the hurt. The good outweighed it by a ton. Or so he liked to think.

There was brief silence as that lovely comment washed over the room, but Eddie didn’t wait too long to break it.

“I wonder if I’ll be in a wheelchair or if I’ll be able to walk.” Deft fingers continued their tapping absently on his leg as he thought. “Like I can move and everything, I just don’t have any abdominal strength right now. I think I could probably walk if I could get upright, it’s just that sitting up would be a massive issue right now. I’d pop so many stitches.” He thought about his injury, and his hand drifted up onto his stomach, where his brow furrowed in discomfort as he ran his fingers over where the staples were under the bandages. It was a weird kind of pain that he would have a hard time describing, should Eddie be asked. It was sort of like having a scab, and it being itchy so you pick at it, or wanting to pick at a hangnail even though it hurts, or biting your cheek when you were nervous. The dull ache under his fingers reminded him he was alive, and even though it wasn’t comfortable, it didn’t hurt. He wanted to rip the stitches out with his hands.

Eddie didn’t want to hurt himself, no, he’d never consider self harm in a million years, this was an entirely different ache, and he didn’t know where it came from, but he decided he didn’t want to indulge it (probably for best). He flattened his hand over his stomach to stop from picking.

He hadn’t realized he’d gone quiet, and blinked over to Richie, he made a small noise in the back of his throat before looking forward again. “I wonder what I look like under all of the bandages and gauze.” Eddie mused, “probably not great, I imagine. I wonder what I’ll say to people who ask about it.”

“The truth. You tell them you fought a murderous alien clown and lost and still lived to tell the tale,” Richie said. “That’ll certainly get them to stop asking. Just say it with enough confidence and you sound like you know what you're talking about. Or in this context, sound like you're definitely crazy.” Richie’s gaze drifted to Eddie’s stab wound from Bowers. “At least you can hide the big one,” he pointed out. “Maybe use makeup to hide be knife hole in your face.” He looked at his own permanently trembling hands. His palms were littered with vertical scars. They weren’t very prominent, but if you looked, they were certainly there. Between the shaking and the scars, Richie felt a bit like Doctor Strange, only his lines were not perfect from fingertip to wrist and there weren't just five. Richie had dozens of uneven, jagged, ugly lines down his palms from everything that he had done. Digging through Neibolt, sliding down the well, helping Eddie. In a few years, the scars would likely fade, but for now they remained. “Can’t put makeup on the fronts of your hands. Wipes right off.”

Eddie saw Richie look down, and after a brief internal battle, he reached over and gently covered the man’s palm in his own. “Then I guess we’ll just sound crazy,” he said, offering an almost reassuring smile. 

Richie closed his hand around Eddie’s. He couldn’t be brave like Eddie, couldn’t honestly say that he wasn’t ashamed of having such scars. He didn’t want to wear them with pride or flaunt them, and he’d probably never take off his shirt again. He knew his handshakes would become timid and he wouldn’t high five anymore. He’d probably wear gloves a lot when it was cold, keep his hands in his pockets. He’d always wear a shirt to the beach, keep his top half covered when having sex. The only time his back would ever see light was when Richie showered, and even then, he’d avoid looking. He was already self conscious enough, he didn’t need jagged scratches down his back paying contribution to that. 

But the thing was, he’d do it again. He’d take a million more scars all over his body if it meant getting to Eddie on time. 

Eddie decided he wouldn’t cover up the scar on his face since it would probably only be an inch, maybe an inch and a half long. He didn’t think he’d have the patience to learn how to cover it properly with makeup, or to do that every day. Besides, it’s not like he looked threatening elsewise, so it wasn’t really a put off. 

And Richie would be there too, Richie wouldn’t ever make him feel self-conscious about it, not on purpose. (Maybe with a shitty joke, but he’d see Eddie and feel bad and apologize. Probably.)

A small smile pulled on Eddie’s lips as he realized that he was imagining things in the future, and Richie was there. Richie was there in the future, without hesitation. “I don’t think I’ll hide it, not unless it gets to be too overwhelming,” he offered. “I don’t think I’ve asked how you feel. We’ve been talking about me a lot, but your hands are so scratched up, and you keep wincing whenever you lean back in your chair. Are you alright?”

Richie would have doubled over in laughter if it wouldn’t have ripped his stitches open. 

“Am I alright?” His voice was teetering on becoming hysterical. “Am I _alright?”_ He slapped his knee with his free hand and tried to not let it show that he winced at the contact. “Yeah, Eds. I’m all good. I watched you die, tried to get myself killed, mourned you, climbed into the sewers by myself following a voice I wasn’t even sure was real, lost some blood, carried you for however many miles while you bled out in my arms for the second time, had to find out you died again, got you back, outed myself and confessed that I’ve loved you since you kicked me in the face when we were thirteen.” 

The last twenty-four hours had been filled with so many ups and downs, Richie didn’t know how to feel. Didn’t know what to think. 

“So yeah, I’m _great.”_

Eddie sort of deadpanned Richie, and after staring at him for a few seconds after his whole spiel, he made a noise and raised his eyebrows as he looked away. “Welp,” he stated, popping the ‘p’, “that was a can of worms. I meant ‘are you alright’ in a physical way, not a ‘hey,-we-just-went-through-several-traumatic-experiences-and-you-watched-me-die-in-your-arms-and-I-died-in-your-arms-but-I’m-alive-now’ kind of are you alright. Obviously you’re not okay like that, that’s literally such a massive load of bullshit that we are going to need several months in therapy to even begin to unpack everything that happened.”

Eddie finished with the same tired and sort of done look he’d started with, deadpanning Richie. “So let me try again, and phrase this in a way you can understand, asshole.” The insult was met with a reassuring squeeze of Richies hand, but not too tight as to not hurt him. He smiled softly. “Why the _fuck_ are you in a wheelchair, Rich? I haven’t been told anything.”

“Ah,” Richie said with wide eyes. He nodded a few times. “Yeah, I guess you don’t know, huh?” He took a deep breath and let it out shakily. 

“When I uh... when I had that dream, I could hear you. You were crying and calling for help. So I went to the Neibolt and began to look for you. And when we killed It, everything began to collapse. Th-the cave we were in. The house. Everything. It all came down. And I-... I realized you were still duh- _down_ there.” His voice cracked. “So I dug around and found the well. But that rope we used to lower ourselves down was gone. It had broken. And I-... I could still hear you. And you were so scared, and I was terrified for you so I just-...” Richie let go of Eddie’s hand and looked at his palms. If he focused, he could still see the dirt and blood oozing out of them. “I climbed down the well,” he said plainly. “I put my feet on one side and tried to slowly inch down, but I was shaking so bad, and I couldn’t hold myself, and I slipped. I fell... maybe twenty feet? Maybe fifty? However deep that hole was because I wasn’t going to die while you needed me, and so I pressed my back to the rocks and they ripped through my skin like... like, I dunno, fucking paper or something.” His back was numb but he could still feel though the pain meds he was on. He could feel the lines from sharp stones and jagged rocks. “But I caught myself. Then I wandered around until I found you. And there wasn’t any time to feel the pain because you needed out, and you were in way worse shape than I was.” Richie sighed, and the tiniest bit of pressure came off his chest. 

“So yeah. My spine’s a little fucked but I’ll be fine. It hurts to stand though. Kinda hurts to move too,” he said, a tiny laugh in his voice. He didn’t like to laugh though. It hurt his shoulders. “But that’s a total sob story. I’m just ready for someone to push me down the hall in this thing until I hit a wall. That’s the first thing you’re doing once you can stand, by the way.”

Eddie felt guilt swirl in his stomach despite knowing that he wouldn’t have been able to do anything different if he tried. It wasn’t his fault, and yet he felt like it was. He mustered up a smile. “Definitely,” he promised. “Even if you’re healed up and can walk, we’ll steal one or something and I’ll push you down a mountain if you want me to.” _I'll do anything you want to do. I want to make up for every second we’ve lost._ “And then I will proceed to laugh at you when we end up right back in the hospital because you have a concussion.” 

“Wow, Eds, you trying to kill me?” Richie said, his grin becoming a little more real. He frankly couldn’t imagine a better way to go. _Here lies Richie Tozier, dead by wheelchair on mountain._ His brain was a little slow, much like their lazy conversation had been, so right as Richie opened his mouth to make another joke, Eddie’s smile faded and he snapped his jaw shut. 

“I’m sorry,” Eddie hummed, trying not to sound too guilty. “I know I couldn’t do anything, so I’m not sorry for me, but I’m sorry for you. Not in a pity way, or anything, but I’m just sorry that you had to go through all that to get to me, even though I know you’d do it all again.” He swallowed, then tried to lighten the mood by adding, “which is a lil’ gay, by the way.”

“Yeah, well, I suppose acting a lil’ gay comes with the whole being gay thing I’ve got going on,” Richie said, barely even registering that it was the first time he had ever called himself just ‘gay’ without any negative connotation strapped to it. 

Eddie laughed lightly, but it was forced. He pursed his lips. “I’ll... This is new and feels weird because it takes time to adjust, but something underneath all of that makes me know that it’ll be fine. We literally murdered some kind of demon clown. I’m still a little hazy on the details but... we’ve been through a lot, and we’re a little fucked up but...” Richie’s hand felt so nice in his, so he sighed comfortably. “We can be a little fucked up together. And then we can be okay together.”

Richie squeezed Eddie’s hand. He could get used to that. “That sounds like the end to a cheesy romcom, Eds. Roll the credits.” Only this wasn’t the end of Richie and Eddie’s story. It was only the beginning of the next years they had lined up together. _God_ , that sounded like the end to a cheesy romcom too. 

“Y’know, if our lives were a movie,” Richie said, then kicked himself when he realized that he had missed an opportunity to sing “If We Were a Movie” by Hannah Montana (or was that one by Miley Cyrus?). “Then I’d cast James McAvoy as you and hope he’d keep that sexy Scottish accent of his. He’d be all like, to Chris Hemsworth, aka on-screen me,” Richie took a second to clear his throat and pull out his Scottish Hitchhiker Voice, saying, “‘My Gawd, Richee, look at the sex beas’ ya’ve turned inta! Take ma now!’” His Voices had gotten kinda rusty after years of not doing them because some studio execs said they were getting old. But Eddie had laughed at them when they were eleven and his British Monarch sounded just like his Dapper Englishman and his 17th Century Pirate From Ireland, so there wasn’t a doubt in Richie’s mind they’d work now, and they did; Eddie laughed.

“Though maybe Celine Dion could play me,” Richie added, changing his mind at the last second. “She could capture my aura or whatever shit you wanna call it. But it’s her or Hemsworth, no one else.” He wasn’t entirely sure where he was going with the whole movie thing, but it just happened, so he took it and ran.

Eddie scrunched up his nose. “I’ve been told I look like that old actor—Anthony Perkins—so I think maybe a young Anthony Perkins would play me. If we’re going on who we want though, maybe Josh Radnor.”

“Lovely choices,” Richie said, semi-sarcastically mostly because he really could see the similarities. “Either _Psycho_ or _How I Met Your Mother_. Both seem fitting.” Especially Anthony Perkins. But it was just a little off. Now that they were on the topic, Richie couldn’t help but feel like there was someone who reminded him exactly of Eddie. Maybe someone from a horror movie, but he wasn’t sure. How fitting would that have been anyway? Was it _Insidious?_ _Saw?_ No. No, he didn’t think so. Richie couldn’t remember. _Great_ , now it was going to bug him. 

Eddie was grinning, broad and genuine as they bantered. “Also though, there is _no_ way you are Hemsworth worthy. Maybe Reynolds though. I’m not saying Hemsworth is better than Reynolds, but I think Ryan could pull off your personality better. I don’t know if you deserve a god like that playing you though.” 

“Holy fucking shit, Eds, you’re absolutely right. What better man to play me than the Merc with the Mouth, the Hitman’s Bodyguard, Green Lantern himself, one Mr. Ryan Reynolds. Also are you implying I’m _not_ a god? Because there are people on Twitter who would argue otherwise.” Or they would have a month ago before Richie dropped off the face of the earth without a word. 

“Sure, Rich.” Eddie paused and raised his brow, considering. “Although, you _are_ a comedian. You’ve been in movies before. Maybe you could just play yourself.”

Richie snickered. “We could even do the script together.”

Eddie was grinning, the grin that wrinkled his eyes and made him look older than he was. “I am _not_ writing a movie with you. And I know your spelling is shit; I’m the one that helped you with your homework in grade school,” he reminded, and shook his head as he looked back up to the ceiling.

“We’ll get Bill to write the movie,” Richie countered, “but we tell him how it ends.“ His smile fell into something more comfortable and content. “Shit, you better shoot me, because I’m about to say something cheesy, but I guess even we don’t really know how it ends.” 

Eddie toyed with the hem of the blanket in his bed. “I’m excited to find out, though. Nervous, but that’s normal. overall just really... _excited._ Yeah.” 

“Me too, Eds.”

It felt like Eddie had a whole new life to live. At forty, he could very well not even be halfway done. He could live a long lifetime, one longer than he’d lived with his mom, one longer than he’d lived with Myra, one all on his own, one with Richie beside him. It felt good knowing that he would have support in his life, even if Richie decided—God forbid—that he didn’t want to help Eddie figure this whole sexuality thing out, he knew that he would only be a text or a phone call away. He knew that he wouldn’t be monitored, that he would be trusted. 

It was freeing, and in a moment of amusement, he realized that maybe he had the clown to thank.

Richie didn’t say, but he had a good idea of how the end was going to play out. Or at least how he hoped things played out. They’d live in the city, probably L.A. because _damn_ did Richie love it there. And he had a suspicion Eddie would love it too. Maybe once they got wrinkly and their bones creaked every time they breathed then they could go somewhere a little more quiet. But he still had twenty years before he even had to think about being super wrinkly and gross. (He didn’t want to talk about the roots of his hair slowly starting to turn grey. Once a month he set aside half an hour to pluck out the greys.) Maybe they’d have a dog. Maybe a Great Dane or a husky or a lab. Richie had always liked big dogs. But maybe not a dog. Now dogs set off a bad feeling in Richie’s stomach for reasons too obvious to be stated, so maybe they’d have a cat. Or a fish. Fish were easy. But you couldn’t pet fish. You could pet cats. 

Yeah, they’d have a cat. Would they have a kid? Maybe two little guys running around. 

Richie shuddered at the thought. He couldn’t even take care of himself. He killed any kind of living creature in his possession a week after he began taking care of it. (Rest in peace Planty One through Twenty-Two. May your leaves thrive in Plant Heaven.) 

Richie would write his own jokes again. He hadn’t written his own material in almost a decade, but he had been itching to get back in it since... since about a week of telling other people’s jokes had passed. He would admit it was easier and he had more time for himself, but it wasn’t nearly as fulfilling. Hearing an audience laugh until they cried because you made them laugh until they cried was one of the best feelings in the world.

Eddie could keep being a risk analyst if he wanted. Richie really didn’t know if he liked his job or not. It paid well, clearly, but it sounded so incredibly _boring_. Richie hated thinking that Eddie had gone all these years with a job he hated on top of all the other shit he had to deal with. 

“But I think I have an idea of how this is gonna turn out,” Richie said genuinely. It was really all a guess though. The one thing he knew was that he would stay by Eddie’s side for as long as he was allowed to. “For the next four-ish years, me and you can be like Kevin Hart and the Rock in Central Intelligence until you get sick of my shitty references and my Voices that really have barely improved since middle school. Y’know they have this really weird dynamic where you kind think they’re gonna fuck the whole time but they never do? Or was that just me who caught onto that? Whatever. Then I’ll fuck off after X amount of years, but that’s a while away. And even then I’ll be too damn stubborn to stop seeing you completely. Like I’m saying that I’ll force my love on you. Can’t run away from all this, sugah.”

Eddies stomach turned unpleasantly when Richie said he’d fuck off eventually, he didn’t want him to fuck off. He wanted him to stay. Fuck on. Nope, that’s not right. The opposite of fuck off though, whatever that was.

Richie’s mini monologue ran all over the place. He barely knew what he was saying half the time, but he knew something: Eddie wasn’t forever. He’d grow tired of Richie’s antics and strange lifestyle and cut ties that Richie would hold onto for dear life. He would especially have to hold onto them if for some reason they started to forget again when they get more outside of Derry. That in itself was a terrifying thought. Richie didn’t want to forget. He couldn’t afford to forget everything. He wanted to remember Jade of the Orient and the beautiful feeling of seeing Eddie for the first time in twenty-seven years and remembering what happened in the arcade and the Paul Bunyan statue and Temple and the library with Mike and-

Holy fucking shit, the library with Mike. 

  
  


_Mike Hanlon Gets High_

Mike was forty-years-old, and he had never been more than forty miles outside of the town he was born in. He had never had a relationship that lasted longer than four months, had never gone to his four years of college, had never even been inside a public school for longer than four minutes when he would occasionally pick up one (or all, once he could drive) of the Losers to come to the farm after school. He had never been in love, never smoked, never done drugs, never hooked up with anybody for the hell of it. In short, Mike was forty-years-old, and he hadn’t really _lived_ yet. 

He had also never been on a plane. 

His first time in an airport was some twenty-four hours after being freshly traumatized. Ben had bought tickets for each of them, not telling anyone how much first-class tickets for a non-stop flight to Atlanta cost. Mike had tried to argue, but a stern look from Bill had him eating his words. A simple plane ticket was nothing to Ben. Even four tickets wouldn’t have a scratch on any of their paychecks; Mike was next to three millionaires after all. 

“I just don’t like being in debt to other people,” he had explained as they all waited in line to check their bags. “No offense, Ben. It’s nothing personal. I just don’t really like feeling like I _owe_ someone else, y’know?”

Before Ben could reply, the woman checking IDs finished looking at Beverly’s and called for the next person in line. 

“Yuh-yuh-yuh-you don’t owe any of us anything,” Bill said, stepping forward from behind Mike where he had been waiting patiently. They would have been standing shoulder to shoulder if it hadn’t been for the, quite frankly, remarkable height difference. More accurately, they were elbow to shoulder, Bill’s shoulder being just above Mike’s elbow. Granted, a solid eight, maybe even nine inches of difference would do that to a pair. If you asked any of the Losers, they would say Bill hadn’t grown a bit since they were all sophomores in high school. 

“Thanks, Bill, but that’s not-”

Bill cut Mike off with a sharp shake of his head. “Nuh-no. Look, man, yuh-yuh-you kept tuh-tabs on all of us for tuh-tuhwenty-seven years. If anyone owes anyone eh-eh-anything, then wuh-we owe _you._ ” He cracked a grin, and Mike couldn’t help but do the same. Bill’s smile was contagious. “I th-th-th-think I may be in your d-duh-debt until we’re suh-seventy.”

_“Next!”_

Security was relatively painless. It didn’t take long for all of them to make their way to their terminal. Bill quickly sniffed out the nearest place to buy coffee and promptly drug Ben with him to go get some tooth-rotting abomination with shots of caffeine in it. Mike found himself wandering around the airport with Beverly just to kill time. They didn’t talk about anything regarding the past few days, but Mike still worried. He tried to call Richie to see how they were doing, but it went straight to voicemail. Eddie was the same. 

“It’s only been a few hours, Mike,” Bev reassured him. “I’m sure they’re fine.”

“I don’t know…” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I mean, Eddie’s still got more surgeries planned so that he can heal properly. What if something goes wrong?”

Bev raised a brow. “And if it does? What are you going to do about it?” She crossed her arms and stopped their stroll. “It’s out of your hands, Mike. Besides, what about you?”

“Me?” Mike blinked and stared blankly. “What about me?”

“How are _you?”_

“Good.” The reply came too fast. Beverly didn’t need to say anything. Her stance told him she was waiting for a real answer. “Tired,” he conceded. 

“I know,” she said because of course she knew. It was Bev, but also anyone could have told you that Mike Hanlon was tired. Plain, honest-to-God _tired._ “You wanna talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“Okay.”

And that was the end of that. She didn’t push for more, but she also didn’t forget how drained Mike was. Bev drug him into a little bookstore that sold stuff even Mike hadn’t heard of alongside t-shirts that said “Bangor, Maine,” portable chargers, packs of gum, tampons sold in pairs, and those tiny sticks of deodorant that cost more than the full-sized ones. There was only Dove, which was disappointing. Old Spice was clearly better. 

Bev disappeared into the rows of corn chips and Twizzlers, and Mike found her almost ten minutes later holding an obnoxiously large novel. She had it open somewhere about halfway, her eyes scanning the pages quickly. 

“Is it any good?” Mike asked, standing across from her to read the book upside down. He read a line or two, and it seemed familiar. Maybe some bestseller he had checked out years ago. 

“It’s not bad.” Bev thumbed through the rest of the pages. “But I’m not gonna get it. The author is a real dick, I hear.”

It was a strange reason to not read a book, but not a totally unheard of reason. Bev set the book back down on the shelf, and Mike immediately snorted. 

_The Black Rapids._ William Denbrough. 

“The ending could use some work,” he quipped untruthfully. Mike actually held a very unpopular opinion: he actually kind of liked the ending of _The Black Rapids._ Sure, it was sad and messed up, but wasn’t life? Not all stories stopped where they should, and epilogues rarely meant the end. Life didn’t wrap up in a neat little bow. Strings were loose and frayed. It was a realistic ending, which was a nice change of pace for a horror. 

He seldom told people he liked the end, though. People thought strangely of him for liking the unresolved endings. He liked to think of them less as unresolved and more ambiguous. Who’s to say the movie ended when the credits rolled? 

Mike and Beverly met back up with Bill and Ben about half an hour later, and the four of them sat in relative silence for the next twenty minute before they were called to board the plane. And it wasn’t until they were moving down the runway, quickly gaining speed that panic started to seep into Mike’s mind. He had never flown before. What if something happened? What if the plane crashed? What if they got to Atlanta and Stan wasn’t there? What if Patricia refused to let them see Stan? What if Stan wasn’t okay as they all thought he was? Would it all matter if they never even made it to Georgia? God, just thinking about something going wrong was making his palms sweaty. Not just clammy, but _sweaty._ Mike wiped his hands on his jeans much harder than he needed to and grabbed for the magazine in front of him. He didn’t even flip it open, instead opting to just fiddle with the corners of the flimsy pages, tearing them ever so slightly with each flick of his thumb. He wasn’t so nervous about the flight as much as he was nervous about what was going to come _after_ the flight. At the hospital. With Stan. Mike knew more about Stan than anyone else, but he still didn’t really _know_ him. He certainly didn’t know Stan well enough to figure out how he would react when they all arrived. 

“Hey,” Bill spoke up, snapping Mike out of his own spiraling thoughts. “I can hear you thuh-thuh-thinking.” And Bill pulled a penny out of nowhere because he was absolutely the kind of guy who would pull a penny out of nowhere just to ask, “puh-puh-penny for your thuh-thoughts?” as he held it out in offering. 

Mike took the penny, saying, “Stan. I can’t stop thinking about him. Because, I mean, who really knows how he’s going to react? It could be great, but also…”

“He could yuh-yell and never tuh-tuh-talk to us again.”

“Twenty-seven years is a long time for a person to change.”

“Well, thuh-thuh-the rest of us didn’t chuh-change all that much. Wha-why should Stan be any duh-duh-duhifferent?”

“You know why he’s different, Bill.”

_Not all of us were buried dead and brought back to life in a coffin, Bill._

“I know,” Bill said, and with such a short phrase he managed to sound decades older.

Mike changed the topic. There would be plenty of time to think about Stan when the Man was right in front of them. “I’ve also never been on a plane before,” he said, “so this is a new experience.”

Bill’s shoulder’s visibly became less tense. “You a nuh-nervous flyer?” His eyes flickered downward for a fraction of a second as something small tugged upward at the corner of Mike’s lips.

“Haven’t decided yet,” Mike replied. 

The wheels of the plane left the ground. Mike pressed his head to the back of his seat and gripped so hard at the armrests that his knuckles turned white. 

Bill chuckled in a way that Mike didn’t think a chuckle could sound. It was… _endearing._ Calming, almost. But maybe he only thought that because it was Bill. And Bill was just… He was so… y’know?

“I thuh-think you might be,” Bill said. 

“What?”

“I think you might buh-buh-buh-be a nervous flyer.”

“Oh.” There was the slightest bit of turbulence, and Mike felt his heart beat so hard, he thought it might beat right out of his chest. (He hated how he had a visual for what that looked like.) “Hah. I might be.”

Bill’s playful grin faltered. “You okay, Mikey?” And he put his hand on top of Mike’s.

For the first time, Mike noticed the lack of a ring on his finger. There was a pale indentation on his skin where the gold band used to sit. It made his hand feel warmer. 

Mike’s grip loosened on the armrests, and Bill laced their fingers together, his palm on the topside of Mike’s hand. A small gesture, a natural one, but it made all that much more difference. 

“I think I will be.” 

Bill squeezed his hand, and suddenly it really seemed like Mike might be okay in the end. 

The rest of the flight passed by before any of them knew it, and soon they were in Atlanta, and even sooner they were standing outside of a hospital. Ben was the one to ask for Stanley Uris. 

“Tell his wife to go home,” said the receptionist. “I haven’t seen her go home since he was checked in, and that was _days_ ago. And she didn’t exactly come in looking her best.”

None of the four standing Losers said anything because they knew that Patricia Uris, the woman who had dug up her husband less than a week ago fuelled by grief and desperation, would _not_ be going home if a bunch of strangers told her to. None of them knew Patricia, but they knew enough. 

Somehow or another, Mike was the one in front of Stan’s room. He had been shoved to the front, but for what reasons he didn’t know. Either everyone else was too nervous to do it themselves or maybe they thought Mike should be the one to see Stan first. So Mike was the one to open the door. It should have been Bill, honestly, it probably should have, but some part of him said otherwise. It said that since Mike was the first one to talk to Stan, he should be the first to see Stan. And see Stan he did. 

Seeing Eddie in a hospital bed had been bad, but at least Mike knew to expect a gaping hole in his torso. He knew about the slit in his cheek, and he was ready for it. But with Stan, there was little telling. 

The image in front of him was bitter and cold. Stan’s skin was yellow and thin, his eyes deep and grey like they had never been before. His arms were stitched up perfectly in a single vertical line going down his forearm. It was a horrible thing to think and an even worse thing to be certain of, but Mike was almost certain the lines had been perfectly straight before they were stitched up, like someone had been very deliberate about their actions. 

Stan’s hands only ever shook when he was anxious. Not when he was scared though. Even scared he could keep them steady. 

Patricia was asleep on the chair closest to Stan’s bed, her hand laying on the sheets interlocked with Stan’s. Patricia was asleep but the Man himself was awake, albeit barely. He offered a weak grin, and it was more than Mike ever could have asked for. 

_“Mike.”_ His voice was hushed, as to be expected. But it was also desperate. 

_“Stan.”_ But Mike wasn’t any less desperate. 

And with the simple uttering of his name by one of the Losers, by someone who was living, breathing proof that they were all okay, Stan promptly burst into tears. 

“It’s so _good_ to see you.”

  
  


_Richie Tozier Grows a Pair_

“Oh my God...” Richie’s playful attitude dropped completely. “Eds, I-... The library... I fucking _killed_ someone. And we... we just _left_ the body! What if somebody finds it?! My fingerprints are all over that tiny fuckin’ axe! I didn’t even think I was gonna make it out of the sewers alive, and now I’m gonna get tossed in jail forever for _murder!”_

Huh. Eddie had sort of forgotten about the whole murder thing. He didn’t seem too phased though. “Richie, come on man, it’s _Derry,”_ he assured, hand reaching out to settle against the crook of Richie’s neck. “So many people go missing all the time, do you honestly think there will be a proper investigation?”

A part of him was completely terrified, the idea that he could finally have and take and be selfish was so unbelievably freeing, and it was all Richie. Richie was what was freeing him, and the concept that Richie wouldn’t be there was... nauseating. Eddie offered a nervous smile, “You’re... You’ll be fine. It’ll be fine, and we’ll be okay. It was self defense. He was trying to kill Mike and you just-... You stepped in. You saved his life. That’s- that’s gotta mean something, right?” He asked, fingers trailing into Richie’s hair, no longer uncomfortable. It was damp from showering, not from grease or grime from the last day and a half, and Eddie almost found comfort in it. “You’re not going to jail I-... I’ll kill someone and hop in there with you if you do,” he tried to joke, but it sort of fell flat, and his smile was anxious and tight. Worried. 

Maybe he was being selfish, because the thoughts that crossed his mind weren’t for Richie, they were for himself. How would he cope? How could he manage? He didn’t know what he’d do, realistically, if Richie actually went to jail. “He stabbed me in the face, Rich, there’s physical proof and multiple witnesses, it’s... It’ll be fine.” He didn’t realize how tightly he was holding onto Richie’s overgrown hair until he stiffly let go and soothed it down, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. “I’ve missed you, even as my friend, man, I don’t want you to-“ he cut himself off and quickly corrected himself, saying, “you're not going anywhere.”

Richie listened to Eddie make an attempt to rationalize, but it all went in one ear and out the other. He couldn’t go to jail! He’d get murdered in jail! Prison was full of guys who cheated on their wives for fun and who stabbed other people with forks for the fuck of it. People like that were fucked in the head! Richie was fine! He was okay! Stable? No. Healthy? Also no. But he was fine. He was a comedian who had a kind-of-breakdown, and that was all the public knew and that was all they’d ever know. Even if he didn’t go to see a therapist or a psychologist or a psychiatrist, Richie couldn’t tell them what happened without immediately getting put into a straight jacket. Who would believe in an evil space clown and a childhood crush coming back to life not once, but twice. No one. No one in their right mind would believe that, and unless Richie had seen it with his own eyes, he wouldn’t have believed it either. But he was there. He knew what happened. He couldn’t deny it. There was no denying. He couldn’t say It didn’t happen; they all knew the truth. 

“I dunno, Eds,” Richie said, staring down at his hands. He liked it when Eddie messed with his hair; it made him feel worth it. “As much as I really don’t wanna leave, I feel like I might have to. Doctors and nurses and prison guards taunting me with their healthy minds. _I’m_ gonna be the crazy one whispering about the evil clown who’s out the getcha!” The thought of Richie in an orange jumpsuit surrounded by burly guys who were also in orange jumpsuits was terrifying. Orange was an awful color on Richie! It clashed with his skin tone! It clashed with his _personality!_

“Okay, so, say it _was_ self defense,” he said, forcing himself to pull it together. “I was saving Mike. And Bowers was a danger to me. He’s attacked me before. I feared for my life, right?” It didn’t really feel like that. Richie didn’t know what had dragged him back into the library. The memory of Stan, the guilt riding him, a gut feeling of dread. But if he had been seconds later, Mike would have had a split skull. “And so would it be best if I went to the police first and said that it was me? Own it up? I know you said that because it’s Derry then they probably won’t investigate, they’ll just like, shrug their shoulders and say they don’t know what happened, but that was how they acted while It was still around. What about now that It’s gone?” If It was actually gone at all. The Deadlights were still working some kind of magic, as evident by Stan and Eddie’s beating hearts. But maybe a part of the Deadlights had latched onto each of them. Richie too. Maybe they were going to be forced to live with the remains of It for the rest of their lives. But maybe not. Maybe they just hadn’t won the fight yet. Maybe they had only won a battle like when they were kids. Maybe the war still raged on. 

But frankly, if It was still alive, it was going to be someone else’s problem. Richie was traumatized to hell and back and they had each looked Death in the eye and told him to fuck off. They deserved a break. And in twenty-seven more years they’d all be pushing seventy. 

But then he remembered Bev said that if It wasn’t dead, they’d all die horribly within a decade. And a decade wasn’t long enough. He needed more time. They all needed more time. Maybe It was their problem. Their war to win. Richie was just sick of getting shot at. 

“I don’t know what to _do_ , Eds,” Richie said, hating how his voice was teetering on desperation.

“Here’s what we’ll do,” Eddie said, trying to keep Richie from falling apart at the seams, “you’ll go to the police station. If you wait a week or two I’ll come with you. I can be your witness. I don’t think I saw you kill him directly or anything—it’s all kind of hazy—but he was enough of an asshole throughout our lives that I’m pretty sure I can be a solid enough advocate.” He gnawed at the inside of his cheek, then winced when he felt his teeth scrape against the cut. 

Eddie didn’t like the way Richie was talking. He missed the confident and cocky exterior; he missed the smiling and the bright eyes. Richie just looked so exhausted and _tired_ . He had bags under his eyes, and while Eddie knew he wasn’t exactly one of the Hemsworths himself at that second, it still didn’t sit easily on Richie’s frame. “I bet Mike would stay a few more days too, for something this important. You’re not going to jail. There’s no way they could twist this into you losing your shit and murdering some guy without any reason. I’m pretty sure that asshole has-“ He stopped for a sudden second, his face turning into one of one who had caught a nasty mistake. He swallowed and corrected, “he _had_ a criminal record. It’s our word against his.”

And he’d give his word. Eddie would yell and scream for hours about Henry Bowers if it meant that Richie would get off scot free. He would answer every question in such vivid detail that the police could say that they’d been there themselves.

The man let his hand linger for a second longer and ran his thumb carefully along Richie’s jaw to feel the stubble catch on the pad of his finger. 

Richie’s face burned red, and he felt everything tense up _(ow)_ when Eddie slowly moved his thumb. It was like a strip tease for his heart or something. It was so bold, much bolder than Eddie probably thought it was. His fingers were mere millimeters away from Richie’s lips. Just a little more to the right and Richie could have kissed his thumb, but then Eddie pulled away.

Eddie set his hand on the bed beside him, upwards in hopes that Richie would take it again. It felt really nice to hold his hand, and it was calming. It made Eddie hope that the day wouldn’t come when he couldn’t hold his hand. “We’ll figure it out, and we’ll be alright. We’ve... we’ve gotta be, yeah? Karma is a thing right? Do good things and good things happen, and we’ve-... I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a pretty shit hand dealt to me and- and I like to think I’m a good person, so the world isn’t allowed to give me something good and then take it away, not after everything we went through yesterday alone, nonetheless the rest of this shitfest. You’re not going anywhere. It’s not fair if you do.” Eddie decided, as if final and set in stone, he looked to Richie and made sure that the man was looking at him. He swallowed thickly, and ignored how his voice was uneven when he added quietly, “you’re supposed to be my good thing.”

Richie’s head was spiraling into a tornado of nothing good

_(life isn’t fair eddie nothing is fair how do you not understand nothing is ever fair someone always gets dealt a better hand i don't understand how you don’t understand it’s never fair)_

but it all came to a screeching halt when Eddie’s touch lingered. The two of them had always been rather touchy-feely in comparison to other people, even couples or the other Losers. Richie pinched Eddie’s cheeks and called him cute and put his hand on his leg when they laid in the hammock. Eddie leaned his head on Richie’s shoulder at the movies and hugged around his waist when they only had one bike. Suddenly forty-year-old Richie Tozier was thirteen and realizing he kind of wanted not to fuck Mrs. K but rather maybe potentially kinda sorta hold her son’s hand as they walked to the Aladdin to see whatever new movie was out. 

“I think you’re my good thing too, Eds,” Richie said, his heart hammering against his chest. He could hear his heartbeat. He could hear Eddie’s too, but his own was almost twice as fast. “Y’know how you said you uh... you needed time? ‘Cause you never really knew about the whole... _queer_ thing until recently? That’s good for you man, but-“ He took a shaky breath. Was he really about to ask for this? He felt like a schoolgirl. “But I’ve waited. And I’ve been patient. And you know I’m not patient. For twenty-seven years I did-... nothing.” He glanced to Eddie’s hand, which now laid alone. Richie put his hand on top of Eddie’s. “So uh... could I- _shit,_ I know you said you don’t want to, but I’m a selfish bastard and _I_ want to, so-... _fuck,_ Eds, can I-“ He squeezed his eyes tight and prepared for rejection. “Can I kiss you? ‘Cause _fuck_ , I shake so hard every time you touch me, I feel like I’m vibrating.”

Eddie’s heart dropped into his stomach. His immediate thought was _no, that’s gay, and I’m not gay_ , and his second thought was _wait, that’s not true._

It was the same panic he imagined he would have felt if he were younger. It was that weird, fuzzy stomach panic, the kind that made you want to say yes but made you know that you should say no. Eddie wanted very much for Richie to kiss him, but everything in his body was tense with _no_. 

That was Eddie’s fight or flight instinct kicking in though. Forty years of conditioning was a lot to undo, and while he wasn’t homophobic before, it was still a big change. 

“I-“ he started, if only to start at all. Was it a yes? He wanted it to be a yes, but his mouth wouldn’t move.

Richie, on the other hand, wanted to dig himself into a grave. He’d really gone out there and said that, and all Eddie was doing was staring blankly. He was just waiting for Eddie to say, ‘sorry, but no,’ but it never came. But neither did a _yes._

Eddie wet his lips before he opened his mouth to talk again, brow furrowed. “I want to say yes,” he offered honestly, “but also I feel like something is saying I shouldn’t. And I know that that isn’t fair to you. You’ve waited and waited and waited, but you’re a guy and some part of me is still just... adverse to that. I don’t know what part.” He shook his head lightly, as if to clear it. “Like maybe I can hear my mom’s voice in the back of my head telling me not to? But I want to. Everything that is me wants you to, but I think I’m just scared. Is that normal? I feel like a little kid who’s running around in secret, all giddy because he’s about to kiss the boy he has a crush on,” Eddie explained with a small, nervous laugh.

He squeezed Richies hand. “So...” and he held his breath before exhaling a scared, “yeah. I’m going to be selfish, and I’m going to say yes because it’s what I want.” A genuine smile pulled across his face as he came to a decision. “I’m sorry if I flinch or something. I kind of feel nauseous, good nauseous, but nauseous. Like I want to throw up a ball of spiderwebs I’m so nervous- I’m sorry I’m ruining the mood. Just do it before this goes down like an even heavier lead balloon.”

Richie would have insisted that it was fine if it weren’t for the real smile on Eddie’s face. 

And so he leaned in.

Eddie's hand found home against the back of his neck, less insistent and more steadying than anything.

Richie didn’t take off his glasses so they kinda poked into Eddie’s face oddly. The sides of Eddie’s bed jabbed Richie in the stomach. His stitches stretched painfully. They were in an awkward position with Eddie half-laying down and Richie in a wheelchair. 

But _goddamn_ if it wasn’t the best kiss Richie had ever had. 

Eddie felt like he needed his inhaler. He didn’t breathe in for the kiss—he didn’t know if he needed to—and the kiss got so much more... _real_ than any he’d ever shared with Myra. He derailed that train of thought quick though, not wanting to think about her. In all honesty it was hard to think about anything with Richie kissing him, with Richies hand on his, and Richie’s body leaning over him, even if it was just a little bit.

It wasn’t exciting or thrilling. It was sweet and soft and for once in all of Richie’s forty years he felt like he really truly, _deeply_ loved the person he was kissing. He brought his other hand (that wasn’t on top of Eddie’s) over and cradled his face (the good side that hadn’t been stabbed) just for a moment because he couldn’t hold his hand still enough to keep it there. It was so raw and real, and it had taken so long to get there that Richie felt himself begin the cry. Never once had he cried tears of joy or happiness. Only a handful of times he cried of physical pain. In the past three days, he had cried more times out of heartbreak and despair than he ever had in his entire life. But this was the first ever time he cried out of happiness. He cried for love. He cried because he was in love. 

He pulled away when he felt tears begin to fall.

Eddie’s brain went numb and his heart monitor beeped, his head was pulled forward slightly, lingering, as if upset that it had been over so quickly, and his eyes sort of lagged behind everything as they opened. When Richie pulled away he just blinked plainly. 

“Sorry I’m just-...” Richie wiped at his eyes. “Talk about slow burn, am I right?” 

_I love you I love you I love you I love you Eddie Kaspbrak you’re it for me I love you I love you so much I’m in love with you Eddie let me kiss you again because I fucking love you with all of me with all of what I’ve got._

“That’s one hell of a buildup to a single smooch, Eduardo,” he teased, unsure if he was asking for a second one or not. He wouldn’t be opposed to a second kiss. Or a third one. Or fourth or fifth or sixth.

Eddie had heard about how people felt like the kisses with the loves of their lives lasted minutes, days, weeks. How they felt like forever. Richies had felt like a millisecond, like it ended so quickly and Eddie was scared that it would be like that every time. It made him reach up and fist his hand instinctively into Richie’s hospital gown. It wasn’t threatening or passionate, but as Eddie saw the wet sheen in Richie’s eyes, he realized it was out of fear. “Then do it again,” he said quietly, not a trace of challenge in his voice.

Even though he went slowly, even though Eddie literally said he wanted to do it again, Richie was caught off guard. He wasn’t prepared; he was stunned and dumb struck because how could he not be? 

Eddie felt like he was going to throw up just as badly the second time, but he carefully pulled Richie down again, and this time he was prepared. He wasn’t stunned or dumb struck, he could savor it, he could close his eyes, and he was surprised that he still knew it was Richie kissing him, surprised that his brain hadn’t hardwired and made him filter and think it was a woman. He didn’t have to pretend to like it like he had for his whole life, because this time he actually did.

It was surreal, that Richie could love him so desperately, and that Eddie could feel it so clearly. 

The saying ‘better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’ had never been more true, because Eddie realized he hadn’t loved, not until now, and if Richie died the second he left the room, it would have made up for everything. Richie was Eddie’s good thing. He had thought maybe he’d win a new car, or one of those vacation getaways, or the lottery.

Maybe, with how rich he felt kissing the love of his life, he _had_ won the lottery. In his own, twistedly gorgeous way.

It was innocent, and when Eddie pulled back this time, he could hardly speak with how tight his throat was, but he croaked out a quiet, “I never want to stop kissing you if it feels like that every time.” He blinked his eyes open and groaned out, “ _God_ that’s sappy and fucking disgusting, but I might not get together with you if it means I’m keeping the world from that. I can’t believe I get to keep you from doing that with anyone else ever again.” Eddie smiled, broad and unabashed as he let out a small laugh, quiet but strong enough to make his torso shake with said laughter, which melted into a shaky breath-sob. He blinked away all of the stress and exhaust that had built up in forty years, he exhaled it from his lungs and held Richie close. 

He didn’t need his inhaler, not when Richie took the weight from his chest and made it feel like he could finally breathe.

“‘Anyone else ever again’?” Richie teased. “Those are strong words, Spagheds. Sure you wanna commit to all this?” In reality though, if Eddie were to ask Richie to marry him, to be his forever, to be his one and only in sickness and in health, he’d say “I do” _so_ fast. He wouldn’t hesitate. He wasn’t even smitten anymore. Smitten was a child with a crush. Love was a couple after a few months. In love with you was after a few years. Maybe marriage. But Richie knew that wasn’t enough. He was handing his stained glass heart to Eddie and trusting him not to shatter it into a million pieces. But he knew better. He knew Eddie wouldn’t so much as put a crack in it. 

Liking Eddie was being his friend. It was making quips and jokes and play-fighting and annoying him but still buying him ice cream at Marco’s because that was the best place in town even if it cost a little more than Kenny’s.

Loving Eddie was being a Loser with him. It was standing by his side and not backing down when he needed help. It was telling him no, he didn’t need his inhaler and no, he didn’t have asthma. It was sharing popcorn at the Aladdin with him and blushing when hands touched. And when you love him, you like him. 

Being in love with Eddie was jumping off the Quarry cliff with him when he was too nervous to go because it hadn’t rained in a long time and the water was low. It was tossing rocks at his window at three in the morning because you wanted to see him. It was going to him when you needed someone to support you and him coming to you when he needed support himself. And when you’re in love with him, you love him and you like him too. 

But to give yourself over to him, to trust him with your everything, was something else entirely. It was sharing a hammock and subtly touching each other when no one was looking. It was crawling into bed with him when you couldn’t sleep. It was being there on his birthday with an ugly, homemade cake because his mom said cake gave you diabetes. It was taking him out to the Quarry just the two of you so you could be alone and be real. It was missing him when you didn’t know him and holding him when he was dying and putting him above everything else because when you trust Eddie with your all, he trusted you too. And most of all, it was kissing Eddie Kaspbrak for the first time in a hospital room at age forty on a Thursday afternoon at two thirty-one p.m. And when you’d give your everything to him, you’re in love with him. And you love him. And you like him. You like him so very much it almost hurts. But it doesn’t really. Because Eddie Kaspbrak is the best thing this world’s got and he’s yours, Richie Tozier. And you’re not ever going to leave him. Never again.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m sappy and disgusting too. Here’s a little secret, Eds: I’m a romantic at heart. I really am. Maybe even more so than Ben, but don’t tell him that.” Richie grinned simply because he could. And it was real. “But you know what? Twenty-seven years is a long-ass time, but if this is what I get now, then it was worth the wait.” 

It was all so _real._

Eddie had met a boy named Richie Tozier when he was young, young enough that he forgot what it was like to be that young, but he never forgot what it was like to be that young with Richie. Richie made him feel like he was that young all of the time, he was infuriating and amazing and completely breathtaking. 

And he was so close.

And maybe it felt like he was sneaking around kissing a boy because that was exactly what he was doing. He couldn’t stop grinning, and it hurt to smile, his cheek throbbed from it but he couldn’t not. “I want to give you...” and when he was looking for a word, for something, he decided on “everything. All I have left.”

They didn’t get a beginning, and it hurt. They didn’t get to be twenty-five and buy a house and paint a picket fence. They didn’t get to be thirty and adopt a dog or a cat or—and this hurt his head to think about—a kid. They didn’t get their beginning. They got more of a prequel than anything, and then the first part of their book had gotten burned and stolen from them. They had a middle and an end now, but Eddie would be damned if it wasn’t his new favorite story.

He would read it over and over and over and over until his fingers were raw from paper cuts. He wanted to memorize every line and every word and every smile and kiss and touch, wanted to remember every second that he would get to spend with Richie.

It was terrifying. He realized he hadn’t felt anything like it before. He wasn’t usually brave, but as he was looking into Richie’s eyes, and he could take on the world. Eddie wanted to look at those eyes every day for the rest of his life because they were the most deeply gorgeous blue he’d ever seen.

Eddie’s thumb traced along Richies cheekbone. He wiped the tears away and ignored that he didn’t have anywhere to wipe the wetness off his thumb. “We don’t have to wait anymore, Richie,” he assured quietly. “It might have been worth the wait, but you shouldn’t have had to wait at all, man.” Maybe the ‘man’ was a less affectionate term than he’d intended, but he was new to this, and soon he would have it figured out.

Richie’s hand covered Eddie’s. It still shook horribly, but Eddie didn’t seem to mind. 

Richie thought Eddie was beautiful. Handsome, sure. He wasn’t bad on the eyes. But he really, truly was _beautiful._ Richie had always thought it was bullshit when people said that eyes were the window to the soul, but seeing Eddie like this made him think that maybe there was some truth to that. He could see that Eddie was in tatters; he was broken and holding together by a string, a thread. Naturally, Richie wanted to see him whole again, but even then, even when Eddie was at his worst, he thought he was gorgeous. He was beautiful. Richie had thought so for as long as he could remember, and he thought so now, just like he always would. 

_I can’t help but love you, even now._

“‘Maybe I shouldn’t have had to wait all’,” Richie echoed. “Maybe you’re right about that, but I’d wait another twenty-seven years just for one hour more with you.”

Luckily, it seemed like there wouldn’t have to be any more waiting. 

It felt nice knowing that they had the time to figure it out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It gets worse in the next one :)


End file.
